


Survival

by SoftKittenClouds



Category: Don't Hug Me I'm Scared (Short Film)
Genre: DHMIS, Don't hug me I'm scared, F/M, Gen, I Don't Even Know, I Tried, Padlock
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-12
Updated: 2017-10-16
Packaged: 2018-10-17 21:16:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 30,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10602405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SoftKittenClouds/pseuds/SoftKittenClouds
Summary: Harry, Robin, and Manny regret their decision to try to plan a secret holiday when they are unexpectedly joined by two unwanted guests. When everyone's favourite two concepts manage to cause a plane crash, a tropical holiday turns into a fight for survival on a mysterious and dangeruous island.Chapter 1.





	1. Somewhere New...

**Author's Note:**

> I haven’t written a fanfiction since I was about fifteen. I’m almost finished with university now six years later, and trying to get back into creative writing before I graduate. I thought this would be a good place to start. I know this fandom is probably long dead, but I’m still kind of in love with all these characters. Forgive me if my writing skills need work, I’m a little rusty. I’m very open to constructive criticism!  
> I thought I’d start with some word prompts. This story grew from the word "Island".  
> Enjoy! And please let me know what you think!

The first thing Harry noticed as he regained consciousness, was the soft rushing sound of the ocean rushing peacefully over the hot sand. The second was the feeling of hot sand scraping his retinas and throat. 

The red head sat up suddenly to allow a few harsh coughs to wrack his body. The memory of the plane crashing returned and he winced. Logical thought returned to his mind after a few mouthfuls of sand had been ejected from his lungs.

Question one. Where was he?

Question two. Where were Robin and Manny?

He knew this trip had been a bad idea. All they’d wanted was one week, just one week away from those monsters they called housemates. The three of them had been planning to jet off to Spain, it had taken months of secret saving and bargain hunting to find a plane cheap enough. They were going to have to stay in a few hostels, but anywhere would feel pleasant after the year they had just had. 

Unfortunately, despite their best efforts to hide the trip, Paige had found their plane tickets tucked away in Harry’s work bag while she was rooting around for a credit card. From there everything had down spiralled. Of course the two psychopaths had wanted to join them, and it was hardly like they had the choice to decline unless they wanted to lose their kidneys again. 

He forced his shaking wet hands into the sand and pushed himself into a wobbly stand, his legs felt quite weak and he wondered how long he’d been out. Harry’s head was pounding and his lungs still felt sore from the sea water, but right now the most important thing was finding his friends. 

It didn’t take him long to identify his surroundings, this was a beach. A nice one too. The sand was crystal white and there wasn’t a piece of trash in sight for miles. Behind him he noticed a thick flurry of trees and plants leading into a shadowed forest of thick hardwood trees. 

He spotted a lizard weave it’s way around a gnarled Drago tree stump. 

That was good, a lizard meant there was fresh water here.

The sky was a deep blood orange, fading into a soft grapey purple. It must be at least early evening, he wondered how much more daylight he had left to find them. He didn’t have a wrist watch to check the time (who needed one when you lived with a ticking monster all the time) and it looked like his phone hadn’t washed up with him. Not that it would help anyway, he could be anywhere in the world right now. Who knew what the time zone was?

“It’s quarter past five, in case you were wondering. You’ve been out for four hours and thirty seven minutes, a terrible waste of time.”

Oh, of course.

Harry spun on his heal in time to see Tony stroll up to him from the shade the trees, his military walk leaving equally paced footsteps in the soft sand. He looked irritable, it was never immediately obvious with Tony, unlike Paige who was easy to read. 

The man kept a stony expression yet as he stopped not a yard away from Harry, the annoyed flair behind his eyes became apparent. It put the poor redhead very on edge. He was careful not to make any sudden movements lest the man take his anger out on him with his polished, red sword.

“Have you…. seen Manny and Robin?”

The words left his mouth before he had much of a chance to think about it, he hoped it wasn’t too forward and he wouldn’t end up skewered. He watched the clock man’s eyes carefully.

Tony looked as stony as ever, he paused for barely a moment before answering sharply.

“No. Have you seen the wicked rainbow wretch?”

Harry shook his head promptly. 

He wasn’t sure if at least finding Tony was better or worse than being alone in this place.

The blue skinned man seemed to narrow his eyes for a moment, shortly afterwards crossing his arms in a bitter defeated way. At least his anger didn’t seem particularly directed towards Harry at the moment

“Well why are you just standing here then?” He snapped sharply after a moment, suddenly starting to march back off down the beach.

Harry paused for a moment before following. What other choice did he have right now?

Walking together felt…awkward. Tony did not speak as they traipsed through the wet sand, and Harry didn’t dare try to start convocation himself. He did consider asking Tony where he had washed up and how long ago he’d woken up, but he decided against it and put the absurd thought down to possible sunstroke.

His mind drifted back to the airplane.

-

7:30am.

“The board says the gates are open now Harry.” The young blue haired boy observed cheerfully as he stood from the uncomfortable waiting room bench and slung his backpack over his shoulder.

Manny had been looking forward to this holiday probably more than the rest of them put together, it was going to be his first time riding an airplane. In fact, it was going to be his first real vacation. The three of them had tried camping once, but it had once again turned out quite unpleasant when they were expectantly joined by their violent roommates.  
This trip hadn’t even started yet but was threatening a quiet feeling of de-ja-vu already.

Harry shifted his weight to his feet and then bent down to scoop up his and Robin’s bags, the poor green haired man had been lumbered with the monster’s luggage since they seemed in refusal to carry anything at all. “Are you doing okay?”

“Yeah, their bags got a lot less heavy after security confiscated their weapons. The luxury of knowing they don’t have any weapons on the flight is almost worth the cavity search.” Robin replied in a half joking tone. Even despite the awkward circumstances of having to bring these creatures on a plane, he was trying to keep a positive attitude.

Harry gave him a small grin and an eye roll. “Doesn’t make them any less dangerous.”

“Ahh who knows, maybe they’ll behave on the plane? It doesn’t sound like either of them have travelled by air before. Maybe they’ll get distracted? Or maybe they’ll poison each other and sleep through the flight?” 

“You’ve been at the bar haven’t you?”

“We’re about to be hurled thousands of feet in the air in a tin can with a couple of psychopathic monsters. Of course I’ve been at the bar, why haven’t you?”

Harry couldn’t help but snort at that. He’d decided to try to stay away from the booze at least until they arrived, someone needed to be sober enough to watch Manny, especially in a foreign country. None of them knew a fluent Spanish (well, Tony and Paige probably did knowing them, but they weren’t the most reliable people).

“Harry, dear! Is it time to board yet?”

The shrill voice of the girl always sent a shiver down his spine. He turned to glance at her as she practically skipped over, dragging a rather unwilling looking Tony behind her. The two of them always looked rather out of place in any public setting, their fashion choices weren’t exactly normal. 

Actually, it was fairly rare to see them go out in public at all. Sure, Paige would tag along on shopping trips from time to time to pick up art supplies, and Tony would sometimes go for a stroll about the neighbourhood if he was avoiding Paige for one reason or another. Yet it was a rare sight to see them both out, and in a crowded place such as an airport. Harry was quite curious as to why they weren’t getting more stares.

“It was time to board six minutes ago, actually.” Tony argued, his eyebrows raising slightly in irritation that she hadn’t asked him first.

Paige defiantly looked more enthused about the whole trip than Tony did. The clock man was irritable and stuffy about the whole situation, they’d had to get up an hour earlier than he usually did to arrive at the airport on time for their early flight. On top of this, all of the delicate timepieces he had planned to work on during the flight had been confiscated from his carryon luggage, something to do with ‘ticking clocks making other passengers nervous’. 

Paige on the other hand didn’t even seem to mind the early rise for once, and she practically danced through security even after they confiscated her weapons and knives. Robin pointed out that she probably still had some extra sharpened pencils hidden in her mess of rainbow hair. It was almost eerie how cheerful she was. Happy suspected it might be ‘her turn’ in their sick twisted game.

Boarding the plane took longer than any of them had expected, the redhead worried at points that Tony or Paige might just murder the elderly lady in front of them for taking her sweet time climbing the steps into the plane. Fortunately the two monsters seemed to be behaving for the most part.

Because of the very cheap last minute flight tickets, they didn’t get much choice on seating either. Manny was lucky enough that the lady sat next to Robin agreed to swap seats with him so he didn’t have to sit by himself. Harry was sat alone near that back, but he didn’t mind too much. At least he was a good few rows back from where Tony and Paige were sitting. The two of them hadn’t been seated together originally, though a few threats and eerie grins towards other passengers seemed to earn them whatever places they so desired. 

Harry could hear small chunks of their argument over the safety video.

“-don’t want the window seat-“

“-tap once more and I’ll-!“

“-they confiscate it?”

“Probably. Do you still-“

“Jerk!”

“It’s in my pocket-“

He pushed his earphones into his ears as the plane rolled down the runway, letting his eyes drift close. He didn’t want to know what they were arguing about. A year of living with monsters had taught him that the way to live a happy (or at least sane) life was to remain oblivious to the dangers ahead until they were upon you.

-

The redhead sighed as his eyes drifted out to the shimmering green ocean which gently caressed the soft sand around his feet, numbing his hot toes. If only he’d known what dangers lied up ahead back then, he probably would have thrown himself out of the plane window.

His thoughts were interrupted when the clock man suddenly stopped and Harry walked straight into him. His whole life flashed before his eyes for a moment, thankfully Tony only seemed to give him a warning glare before his golden eyes moved back to the reason he had halted.

He followed his own gaze to follow Tony’s, suddenly spotting the two coloured masses lying face down in the sand. Harry suddenly felt his heart leap as he recognised green and yellow.

They’d found Robin and Manny.

“GUYS!” He cried out suddenly, rushing over and crumbling to his knees beside the younger yellow boy. He gently pushed his hands to the child’s shoulders to give him a shake and turn him over. Manny coughed up a little sea water and his soft eyes fluttered open a little, only to close again after a second.

“They’re unconscious. The tide is coming in. I’m….I’m going to get them out of the sun and try to find some fresh water for them.” Harry moved a hand to squeeze the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger nervously. He didn’t know why he was telling Tony this information, why would the monster care what he did.

“The colourful harlot isn’t here.”

Crap. He’d almost forgotten about Paige, she could be anywhere. “She’s probably already awake too and has just wandered off somewhere. I’m sure she will turn up sooner or later.” A risky move. He watched the clock man’s golden eyes closely, they narrowed slightly in irritation. 

To Harry’s incredible surprise, Tony didn’t run him through with his sword. Miraculously instead he simply made a small grunt at the back of his throat and grabbed the unconscious Robin by the back of his jacket, pulling him swiftly off of the ground by one hand and hoisting him onto his back. It was a surreal sight to see Tony being...dare he say...helpful.

He didn’t dare argue and instead gently scooped Manny into his arms like a princess, turning on one wet foot to follow the taller man towards the shade of the trees. “Do you…..have any idea where we are? What island we’re on?” He heard himself asking, his voice waivered in worry as he sped up to match the clock’s pace.

Tony did not seem to dignify him with an answer, his silence told him that ‘no’ he did not know. The time monster had never been one to admit when he didn’t know the answer to something. He decided to quickly push for a different question.

“How long do we have left before sundown?”

“Between forty six and fifty four minutes depending on how close we are to the equator.”

Tony’s voice was impatient and it sent shivers down his spine, he decided it would be better to walk in silence. The man clearly wasn’t in the mood for small talk.

The light levels dropped the further they wandered through the trees, Harry felt that they were venturing maybe a little too far from the beach but he didn’t dare say anything to the man leading him. At least the soft rays on sunlight peeking through the gaps of the trees was quite scenic and tropical. If he wasn’t trekking an unknown island with a murderer and his two unconscious friends, it would be a nice relaxing walk.

After what felt like an eternity of walking but in reality was probably around twenty minutes, they came across a light clearing in the woods, a stream of running water rushing through the centre of it. Neither of the men needed to say anything to each other or even exchange a look to know this was where they were stopping. 

Tony quite harshly dumped Robin’s body into a heap in the dirt, which seemed to jolt him back into the conscious world. The green haired man let out a yelp and scrambled back as he noticed the monster looming over him. Tony only seemed to roll his eyes as if he’d been expecting a thank you and perhaps some grovelling.

“Robin!” Harry gently placed the still sleeping Manny onto the ground by the river and rushed over to his newly awoken friend. “You okay?”

Robin groaned a little and placed a hand to his forehead, blinking slowly. “Are we in a forrest?”

“Yeah, on an island somewhere.”

“Holy sh-“

“Yeah.”

“The plane!”

“Yeah.”

“We crashed and-“

“I know.”

The green haired man pulled his hands down his face in dread. “I knew this vacation was a bad idea! I told you! I told you they’d-“. He stopped himself just in time as he remembered that they were in the presence of one of the monsters, Harry felt a small shiver work its way up the other man’s spine.

Tony seemed uninterested in the both of them. He glanced around the area a few times before staring to back in the direction he came from. He disappeared back into the shadows of the trees without a word. Somehow they both knew he was going back out to search for Paige.

Harry sighed, the only thing worse than being stranded on an island was being stranded on an island with two violent psychopaths. By the exhausted look on Robin’s face, he was thinking the same.

“Is Manny okay?”

“Yeah I think so, he’s breathing but he’s still unconscious. He’s been through worse.”

Robin shivered at the thought. “What do we do now? Try to flag down passing ships?”

“It’s getting dark and I don’t want to move Manny too much. Maybe we should camp up for the night and start searching for rescue tomorrow.” Harry replied, rubbing an eye in exhaustion with the palm of his hand.

“I’ll see if I can find any fruit trees and grab some fire wood. I need to stretch my legs anyway. You keep an eye on Manny.” Robin gave a sincere nod as he pressed a hand to the other male’s shoulder before turning and wandering into the trees. “If I’m not back in twenty minutes, come save me.”

Harry gave a small half-hearted chuckle and moved back over to Manny, kneeling down beside the younger boy and running a hand through his messy blue hair affectionately. “Stay safe!” He called out after the other.

Harry’s eyes slowly moved to the glistening surface of the rushing stream of fresh water. The steadily darkening sky was turning the water’s surface a muddy purple colour, yet it still glimmered in the dim light like it was coated in a thousand tiny diamonds.

A gentle gust of wind blew a leaf from a nearby tree into the fast rushing water, it made a very soft splash and moved along like a small boat on the surface.

His mind slipped back…

to the airplane…

…


	2. Scopaesthesia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The trafficlight trio set up camp in the forrest and Harry tries to recall what happened and how they ended up here.  
> Something doesnt feel right about this place, Tony and Paige seem to notice it too.  
> Will they survive the island?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we are with chapter two! Sorry for the wait, writing is a slow process.  
> Thank you to people for the kudos and comments! You guys are so nice! <3 I feel super inspired to write more!
> 
> Scopaesthesia, it means to have a sixth sense about when you’re being watched.

“Attention passengers, due to strong weather on the east coast we are going to make a short detour. This may add an extra hour to the journey and we’d like to offer our apologies for the delay. Thank you for flying with Justice Airways.”

Harry popped out one of his blue earphones and let out a deep sigh. He wished he had downloaded more songs, he’d already exhausted the ones he had and it sounded like they were going to be on the plane for a while longer than intended, at least another three hours from here. He stretched his legs out as best he could in the narrow spacing between the seats and clicked his shoulders a bit, plucking out the second earphone and glancing around the cabin.

He could see Manny at the front playing animal crossing on his cheap knock-off game console, swinging his feet in content, and Robin who was hunched over a paper airsickness bag. At least it looked like the two of them were relatively safe and un-tormented. 

Paige and Tony seemed to be in their seats still too, which was pretty miraculous. Paige had the window seat and was kneeling in her uncomfortable leather chair with her face pressed up against the cold glass, peering out at the clouds. While Tony seemed glued to his seat and had a look of discomfort on his stony face, as if he was sat on nails, bolt upright with stiff arms and tight fists. Harry couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow watching them, it was kinda fascinating to see the know-it-all demons that lived in their house looking so unsure over a new experience. He wondered if monsters like them even experience things like curiosity or nerves, or if perhaps they just mimicked what other humans were doing to try to blend in.

Giving his chin a slight scratch he glanced out of his own window, blinking slightly at the dazzling midday sunlight. His eyes felt sore from being awake for so long and his back ached a little from being crammed into this uncomfortable chair. Maybe he’d grab a glass of wine or take a trip to the bathroom to splash some water over his face in a moment, right now he needed a moment to wake up properly. Something was making him feel….off. He put it down to lack of sleep but he had the weirdest feeling he was being watched. Sometimes he felt it around the house when Tony and Paige weren’t in sight but he could tell they were close, their demonic eyes seemed to burn the back of his skull even when they were hidden. But right now he was behind them and they certainly weren’t turning around to grace him with their attention.

The redhead squinted his eyes a little as he peered out of the window, for a brief moment he thought he saw something just a little too big to be a bird vanish into the mist of a cloud. It was so fast he shook it off, probably a trick of the light.

He reached down to unplug his seatbelt, pausing suddenly as the plane gave a violent shudder. 

“Attention passengers, We are experiencing a little turbulence due to bad weather. Anyone standing please return to your seats and buckle your seatbelts. Thank you for flying with Justice Airways.”

 

-

 

“AAAAAAAAAAAGH!”

Harry almost jumped out of his skin and clutched his heart, no matter how many times he’s heard Manny scream (which was far too many since they gained their unwanted monster housemates) it still stopped his heart for a second. He whipped his head around suddenly to see the younger boy now wide awake and hyperventilating a little, sat up with his hand against his forehead.

“Hey, hey! It’s okay Manny, I’m here, you’re safe.” He called, scrambling to his feet and darting over to his blue haired friend, then kneeling by him to hold a hand to his shoulder. “You okay? We washed up on an island after the plane crashed, but we’re all okay. We are all alive and we can flag down a passing ship come morning time.”

The boy’s breathing seemed to slow after a moment though it took him several minutes to take in all the information. “It’s night….” He stammered out after a moment.

Harry rubbed the boys shoulder a little and offered him a concerned, half-hearted smile. “Yeah, you were out for a while.”

“Where’s Robin?”

“Off finding fire wood and food. He’s fine I promise.”

“And…”

“Them? Tony’s fine, unfortunately. We haven’t seen Paige yet but I’m sure, know our luck, she’s around somewhere.”

The boy seemed to shrink down a bit and hugged his knees. That’s when Harry suddenly noticed his soaking wet backpack still on his back, eyes widening a bit.  
“Manny, you have your bag!”

Manny shot up in an instant, blinking and tugging his pack off. It was dripping with sea water like the rest of him was but it was in-tact and still full. 

“Do you have your cell phone?”

“I…I think so, but it’s probably wrecked from the water.” The boy murmured as he rummaged around in the bag, giving up after a moment and dumping it’s wet content on the ground. There was his red raincoat, three bags of animal crackers, a bottle of blackcurrant squash, his duck shaped coin purse, his stuffed bear, his knock off games console, a couple of unused band aids and a bandage, some antibacterial hand gel, a purple felt tip pen and a very wet notepad, and- HIS PHONE!

Manny grabbed it so fast that it almost slipped from his wet hands, but once he got a firmer grip on it he gave the object a harsh shake and tried the on button. His shoulders fell in disappointment when the small device didn’t light up, sighing and dropping it to the ground with the rest of the items.

“Sorry Harry.”

“Hey don’t worry, we probably wouldn’t get a signal here anyway. Besides, this other stuff is really useful. We can use your plastic bottle to take water with us, your crackers are sealed so we can eat those! And antibacterial gel is really handy for if anyone gets hurt.” The redhead reassured the boy gently, laying out the items around so they could start to dry off in the hot evening sun. Even as darkness began to fall it felt too hot here. “We’ll find a way out of this place, I promise.”

Manny managed to crack the smallest comforted smile, yet it dropped immediately as they heard a loud noise break the silence.

“AAAAAAAGH! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! HEL- GAAAAHHHH! SOMEBODY HELP! HE-AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!”

Both yellow and red sat bolt upright and turned in fear towards the sound that was unrecognisably Robin.

Suddenly the green haired man seemed to burst out from the mess of trees and foliage, bombing into the clearing with twigs and leaves sticking out of his clothes and hair, carrying armfuls of oranges and sticks, which he carelessly threw on the ground as he reached them. He lunged at Harry without a word of warning and sent him tumbling onto his back with a thud.

The redhead instinctively gripped tightly to the other man and used his other hand to grab Manny’s arm. “What?! What is it? Are you okay?”

“I FOUND HER. I FOUND-“

“Hello friends!” cut in a familiar female voice which sent a shiver down three consecutive spines at once. 

“Paige.” Robin whispered, pressing his face into Harry’s chest and shutting his eyes tight. 

The demonic rainbow of colours strolled out from the shadows of the trees with a grin plastered on her paper white face, her arms coated with a thick layer of blood. 

Harry managed to tear his eyes away from the woman’s glistening red soaked arms to glance down at the man clinging to him like a koala, suddenly noticing the blood soaking into his own jumper. “What did she do to you?” he asked quickly, holding the man a little tighter.

“She stabbed me twice in the leg and once in the shoulder, she was unconscious on the forest floor all covered in blood, I only went over to see if she was still alive and she suddenly woke up and lunged for me.”

Harry suddenly tore his focus away from his friend to look back up at the dangerous woman as she strolled a little closer and sat down at their little camp site, peeling off her little heals to let her inky feet breath. If it wasn’t for her evil smirk and the sharp bloody pencil behind her ear, she almost could have passed off for being perfectly safe.

He noticed a bleeding gash on her shoulder and an obvious head wound staining some of her colourful hair red. They looked like man made wounds. Had Tony found her and killed her? Maybe it hadn’t been her turn after all.

“Where’s the insufferable ticking twat? Have you seen him?”

Apparently not, Harry thought. Though he couldn’t help but wonder how she had ended up so deep in the forest, and where had she got these wounds from? Not that he cared much for this nasty creature anyway.

“He was with us, he washed up first. He just went out searching for you a few minutes ago.” He replied to the woman quickly, not wanting to test her patience, she was grumpy when she’d just woken up and a grumpy Paige was a dangerous one.

Instead of the immediately violent reaction they were expecting, her face seemed to fall a little and she glared. “Don’t lie to me.” She hissed, her tone bitter like poison, it made Robin shiver so violently that Harry felt him, and Manny slowly crawled back to hide behind the pair. 

“We’re not lying! He was here! He was with us since we woke up here.” Robin shrieked, turning his head to glance back at the woman with his fearful eyes.

His obvious terror seemed to convince her and she leaned back, making a small grunt at the back of her throat. “Whatever. Where are we? When are we going home?”

“We’re on an island somewhere” Manny piped up suddenly, “We’re going to try to flag down ships in the morning when it’s light.”

She narrowed her eyes a little, but surprisingly, seemed to accept his answer. Her creepy psychotic grin crept back onto her face and she stretched her long inky arms up until they clicked in an uncomfortable sounding way. “Well then. You better start making a fire, hmm boys? “

“Manny can you clean and bandage Robin up while I start the fire?”

“Yes Harry!” The younger boy chirped with a serious nod as he grabbed his antibacterial gel and the clean bandage, scooting over to poor Robin, who was starting to tremble more from the pain than the fear at this point.

Harry gathered some of the sticks that Robin dropped and started shuffling them into a pile, while gathering some of the discarded oranges too. Oranges weren’t his favourite fruit in the world but at least it was something. 

As he dumped down the third armful of twigs, his eyes drifted to the demonic woman. She seemed distracted and was blankly staring into the trees, lost in thought. At least she seemed too off in her own little world to be too harmful to them for the moment. Though something about her behaviour put him at unease. 

Both her and Tony had been acting slightly strangely since they woke up. It wasn’t a big deal since they were both pretty odd people anyway, but it scraped at the back of his mind slightly. Why had Tony been waiting for him to wake up, rather than combing the beach to try to find Paige straight away? Why had he helped carry Robin and find a suitable camping spot? It was almost like he was making sure they were safe because he didn’t want to be alone in this place for some reason, and that wasn’t like Tony at all, he didn’t know the monster of a man vastly well but he knew enough to know that he liked his own company more than anybody else’s. 

Why had Paige woken up in the forest rather than the beach? And where had she got all those wounds from? Why did she look so zoned out? Had she seen something out there? Perhaps it wasn’t just them on this island.

His attention was suddenly brought back to the fire wood as he dropped a heavy branch on his foot and cursed to himself quietly, glancing over to Manny to make sure the child hadn’t heard. He hadn’t, he was far too distracted wrapping poor Robin up in too much bandage.

Harry sat down with a couple of pieces of stone and started scraping them together to try to make a spark. Something odd was making the hair on the back of his neck stand up and his blood run cold, yet he couldn’t put a finger on what it was. Every so often his eyes would drift to the trees half expecting to see someone standing there and staring, yet each time all he saw was leaves and bark.

The sound of rocks scraping together drowned out the sound of Manny’s enthusiastic bandaging and Robin’s complaining. His mind drifted back to the plane and he closed his eyes, focusing on the sound. Something didn’t seem right. What had happened up there?

 

-

 

Lights flickered off for a seventh time and the plane gave a violent shudder. Harry could hear nervous voices from all over the cabin, murmuring and muttering. The plane had been juddering and stuttering for the past twenty minutes and it seemed to be getting worse. Harry regret not getting a glass of wine sooner.

At the front he could hear his poor green haired friend being ill into his paper bag, and sweet Manny rubbing his back and reassuring him that things would be okay and that it was just a little turbulence. For his first ever plane ride, the young boy seemed very calm and collected, Harry felt impressed.

He could also hear the psychotic duo’s arguing just barely over the mess of voices on the plane. The sound made him want to put his earphones back in, their angry tones were something he associated with unpleasant memories.

“-YOU DO IT?”

“I TOLD YOU HE-“

“-NORMAL, 40% SURE.”

At one point he distinctly heard Paige shout “I WILL PUSH YOU OUT OF THE PLANE DOOR.” And the redhead prayed she wouldn’t really do that. He knew they were up to something BAD, they had been sitting still for far too long without an incident. Yet a big part of him really didn’t want to know what they were up to. He told himself that if he blanked it out and ignored it then maybe it would all go away.

The plane took a sudden dip, which made a few people scream and his heart stop for a moment. The plane seemed to level out again quiet quickly but the panic of the cabin seemed to rise tenfold. 

“Attention passengers, we are currently experiencing high winds and some minor technical difficulties. Please be assured that everything is perfectly under control. Thank you for flying with Justice Air.”

Harry leaned back heavily in his chair, noticing he was subconsciously squeezing the chair rest a little. Something was nagging at him, scratching at the back of his skull like a cat trying to get outside. He glanced around the airplane, it didn’t 'look' like anyone was staring at him. The passengers all seemed pretty concerned with other things right now, and the stewardesses and plane staff were off in their own little cabin at the front of the plane, strapped into their seats as the plane jittered and dipped.

His eyes returned to the window to relax himself by watching the clou- were those scratch marks always on his window?

The man blinked rapidly and sat upright with a start, rubbing one of his tired eyes with his palm. There were four scrape marks down the side of his window, it almost looked like sharp nails had scraped down the outer surface. 

Harry lifted his hand to hesitantly touch the smooth, cold surface of the glass but suddenly stopped as the plane juddered so harshly that he was knocked into the chair in front of him with an “OOF”. The seatbelt digging into his stomach knocked the air right out of him and he let out a long sore breath.

His eyes suddenly darted to the monsters again, he wasn’t sure why. Perhaps he was curious to see if they were getting knocked around too. Instead what he saw was Paige taking off her seatbelt and suddenly storming down the passage way towards the front of the plane. She was wobbling a lot due to the turbulence but there was a dangerous look in her eyes and fierceness to her steps that told him she was not a force to be reckoned with right now.

After a few moments he saw the clock man unclip himself from his own seatbelt and follow her, he seemed to struggle to get his balance far more, being the taller creature. Neither of them seemed to respond to the stewardesses shouting at them to immediately return to their seats.

Harry watched them tear open a door they weren’t supposed to go through and slam it behind them and he felt his heart stop. He sank back harshly in his seat and shut his eyes as tightly as he could.

There was no way this could end well. He prayed to god that they weren’t evil enough to murder the pilot and send an entire plane of people plunging to their deaths.  
The plane shuddered violently again and the lights flickered off and didn’t come back on.

“Attention Passengers. We seem to be having some technical difficulties. Please bare with us as we- as…..as we…….what in gods name is that-…..oh god-!”

Breathing masks fell from the overhead, the pilot’s voice cut out, the plastic covers closed over the circular windows suddenly the cabin was plunged into darkness.

" T̖̖ ͖̞̝̦̤͔h̩a ̮̙͇̝̤̜̺ ̤̗̺̼̹̳͕ ͉̟ ̝̩͓͎͍̘̬n͕͇̫̺̩̗̜k͈̬̻̝̜ ͎͈ ̭̞̯͈̣̩ ͔̥̫̩ ̪͚ ̣̻̣͖̻̗ ̬͕̯̮ ͙͚̗̜̹̞͈y͖̮̦̪̩ ̤͖̱͍ͅͅ ̜̖̟̘ ̗͙ ̟̟ ̫͔͖ ͍̩ ̯̠̪̖̙o̖̰̥̟̗u̻̩ͅ ͇̞̞̖̱ ͓̹͍̗̲̻ ͕̝̲̬ ͎͓̤̩̥ ̘͈͇̻̞̮͚ ͙̻̗ͅ ̱̤̠̥ ͍̭̠̻͚̟ ̜͔̬̭͍̜ ̩̯̘̖ ̯̞̜̮̮f͇̝o͕ ̥͔̗ ̞͍̻ ̳̱̭̻͖r̖̝̦̯̰ͅ ̣̰̥̘̥ ̫̖͇͇̬̭̘ ̖̯̙̮̜͈ ̹͔͙̖ͅ ͙̤͖͙̞ ̣̙̟̟̯̠̮ ̘̹̦̺ ͎̠͎̫ ̹̟ ͚͇ ̯͍͖̪̙̱̘ ͈̭̣̼̪̱ ͕̮̭̣͙͍f ͚̹̘̼̝̱̼ ̻̝͖̠͎ ̰̝̠̞͚ ͈͓̯ ̻̰̗̯̣ḻy̯͕͚͚͈͍ ͔̻͉͖̮͇̹ ͎̩͈̖̬͕i ͕̰͉̗̩ ̞ ͈̮ͅn͍̞͓̯ ͍̤̘̳̙̦ͅ ͍̮̬̣͚ ͙̣͖̰̬̪g̟̟̳͇̱ ͎̖͉͇͇̤ ̝͚͉̞͙͙ ̻̝̬͉̼̩̙ ̗̦̹̰̱̬͍ ͉͎ ̫̹̖̥̣̟͙ ̤̤̯̭͎ ͓̗͚̙̳̹ ̟̹͕ ̟̤̟̺͍͓w͇̬͎̺͈͖i̻ ͎ ͚͈̼̬͕ ̠̤̰̬ț̦͙̗̘̬ ̻̠h͉͍͎ ̫ ͈͓̩̣̗͓ ̟͈ ̹̦͎̬͉͈ͅ ̮ ̻̮̘ ̘̰ ̙̳ ̮ ̲̩͓̭͔̭̼ ̫͖̲͔̫̮͚ J͔̟̜̰̗ ͈̙͔̖̠͓ͅ ̱ ̖͇̞̫ ̠͉͉u̱̪̼̙͖s͔͎͓͉t͇i̯̼̤͍͈͇ ̝̱͇͙ ̘c͉̞̙̮ ͕̫̺̯ ̩e̩̮̠̤͈̳͚ ͉̰ ͍̰̖̩̦͎ ̙̟̼̪̮̝ ͕̝̹͍ ̥̮̩͖ ̻̗̹̬̺̖ ̗̫̩̟̣͕ ̻̹̳͍ͅ A̭̤̩̭̪ ̼̠̠ ͈̙̰̹͚̦͔ ̲̙͔ͅ ̜̞̙̫ ̼̮i̩̻̹̲͉̜ ͓̘̤̰͉̙ ̻͎̣̠͙͓ ̠͇ ͚̰͇̩͉̗ ṟ̮̰̬̟ͅ.̙͇.̝͚̝̟͇͖̫.̘̭͈̬̝̝..̞̦͔͈͚̘͓ "

 

-

It must have been at least midnight when the fire was finally lit and blazing strong, it was hard to tell without the clock man there to remind them of the time every few minutes. Harry doubted they even needed the fire really, it was a handy light source but the weather seemed swelteringly hot already and they didn’t need any more heat.

Robin was all bandaged up, perhaps a little too well and couldn’t move his arms much. Paige seemed mostly docile for the moment at least, she seemed content enough flopped on her stomach drawing silly faces on the oranges with her inky fingers. Everyone seemed to be drying off well in the warm weather. It wasn’t much of a holiday, but it certainly wasn’t unpleasant or anything.

Harry yawned exhaustedly and peeled an un-inked orange, handing it to Manny to eat once the soft, sweet fruit was free of its tough skin. He picked up another to peel for himself but stopped dead and dropped it in an instant as he saw a dark figure stroll out of the woods.

He felt his shoulders un-tense and he sighed in relief as he realised it was just Tony, then pausing to realise how surreal it felt to be ‘relieved’ to see the demonic psychopath of a man. This constant feeling of being watched was clearly messing with his head a little.

The clock man paced over, his harsh steps like perfect clockwork clacking against the dry ground. He looked bitter and irritable, hand firmly grasping the hilt of his sword. It made a chill run up Harry’s spine, yet what disturbed him further was when the blue skinned man seemed to suddenly stop with a jolt as he saw the colourful paper lady. He was sure he saw the man’s pupils shrink for a moment and his shoulders tense, and he noticed him turn to glance uncomfortably back into the forest for a moment. It was deeply unnerving to see the monster looking so uncertain and unsure.

Tony seemed to regain composure quickly, it didn’t look like Robin or Manny had even noticed his moment of confusion and shock. He strolled over to his partner in crime and sat down in front of her. It was always an interesting contrast seeing them sit together, how the creativity woman would sit comfortably, her back sloppily arched and her legs crossed, while the clockwork man sat perfectly on his knees with excellent composure and posture. He couldn’t help but listen in on their convocation a little as he stared into the flames of the fire.

“How did you do that?”

“Do what, dearest? Where have you been all this time? Did you get lost in the woods?”

Ugh creepy, he could even hear the sadistic, toothy grin in the woman’s voice.

“You know exactly what. You were following me I know you were. You forget, I have excellent senses my dear, you can’t fool me that easily.”

“Excuse me? I believe it was you that was out searching for me, not the other way around you tyrannical timepiece, I-“

The woman suddenly cut her sentence and her head spun creepily almost 180° around to stare at Manny. She narrowed her eyes slightly and the boy gulped and stared back, dropping half of his orange.

Harry was about to leap up and try to snatch away her attention before she lashed out, when he noticed her sickening grin slowly creep back onto her face. “Manny, dear. Don’t make any sudden movements now, I do believe you’ve made a little friend.” 

There was a pause of silence as the boy froze perfectly still, not daring to even move so much as his eyes. It was a few moments until someone noticed what she was talking about, and Robin let out a loud scream as he saw the shimmering grey scales of the snake crawling over Manny’s foot.

Harry felt his heart stop and scrambled back a little, pupils shrinking at the sight of the snake. He had no idea if it was venomous or not and he really didn’t want poor Manny to find out. His head whipped back around towards the two murderous monsters, a look of pleading in his eyes. “How do we get rid of it? What do we do? Do something!”. His tone was desperate and he hoped his demand wasn’t too forward, the two of them didn’t take well to being told what to do.

Paige made the most delighted little evil laugh as she pressed her small inky fingers to her cheeks, “What a wonderful time for a lesson about dangerous animals!”

Though fortunately for them, Tony seemed irritated by the whole situation and frowned heavily, suddenly pushing himself to his feet and strolling over to Manny. Harry watched as he raised an eyebrow at the snake before suddenly grabbing its tail and hoisting it off of the ground. “It’s just a snake. We don’t have time for this nonsense.”

Manny immediately shuffled back away into Robin’s arms, and Robin kept his dinner plate wide eyes on the wriggling and thrashing snake in the taller man’s hands. “Um, Tony. You really shouldn’t do-“

The green haired man was cut off suddenly as the shimmering grey snake thrashed violently and jammed it’s sharp fangs into the blue skinned man’s arm. He seemed to jolt slightly in surprise more than the pain, his eyes widdened and he suddenly tore it out of his arm and violently threw the poor creature into a tree, quite easily killing it with the force.

“-That.”

The moment of awkward silence that followed was broken by Paige let out a sudden burst of shrill laughter, rolling onto her back and kicking her inky legs in the air. “It BIT you! it BIT you!!!!!” She squeaked out between sickeningly evil giggles.

The man gave her a glare that could burn through steel and rolled up his sleeve to take a look at the two perfect puncture holes in his forearm. He ran a gloved finger over the two bloody holes before turning her violently angry gaze upon Robin. “Was that a venomous snake?”

The green haired man clung to Manny a little tighter as the man spoke, swallowing dryly and trying to contain the shivering of his shoulders. “I…I think it was a Black Mamba. They’re most commonly found in Africa. Considering we were close to Spain when we crashed, this probably means that we are somewhere close to the Canary islands.”

Harry watched painfully as the clock man lost his patience and drew his sword, holding it against the green haired man’s neck warningly. He noticed Tony’s hand trembling just a little around the hilt of the weapon.

“Is. It. Venomous?” 

Poor Robin made a quiet squeak and let go of Manny so that he could crawl away to safety. 

“…Yes. It’s venomous, it’s bite contains a powerful neurotoxin that’s fatal. I’msorrypleasedon’tkillme!”

The man snarled violently and dug his sword into Robin’s shoulder painfully, Harry heard the squelch of muscle tissue being torn even from his position several meters away, followed by Robin’s pained screaming.

Fortunately Tony seemed to quickly lose focus in him and instead pulled his sword back out and started pacing angrily. “How long?”

Manny scrambled over to Robin’s aid, quickly starting to apply pressure to the quickly bleeding wound in the poor man’s shoulder. While the green haired man let out small whimpers of agony and tried to pull himself together enough to make words. “Generally, symptoms start to occur within the first 45 minutes. Dizziness, confusion, double vision, nausea, temperature imbalance, headaches, hallucinations, loss of muscle control, headaches, seizures, convulsions. That kind of thing. Then without medical treatment you’ll probably die in 7 to 24 hours of either heart failure or brain damage. In Africa they call the bite of a Black Mamba the ‘Kiss of Death’”. He rambled nervously.

Tony grit his teeth furiously as he listened, though much to their surprise, didn’t seem to take any more of his rage out on Robin senselessly. Instead he shoved his sword back into its place on his belt and stormed over to Paige with a dangerous look in his golden eyes.

“Kill me.”

“What? No. I’m not wasting a perfectly good turn murdering you when you’re already dying from your own stupid actions.”

“I demand you kill me immediately. I refuse to waste 7 to 24 hours dying a slow death. I have things to do!”

“What things? We’re trapped here if you haven’t noticed already dear. It’s not like we have anything better to do right now than sit and enjoy the show.”

Her grin was so wide and demonic that Harry wondered how on earth it even fit on the woman’s small pale face. He dragged a hand down his face and crawled over to Robin to help Manny patch the traumatised man up. 

He silently prayed they wouldn’t start a fight right now, or take any of their aggression out on them. It had been a long day, and it looked like the night was going to be long too.  
He made a grab for the roll of bandages and started unravelling some as many smeared the sobbing man’s wound with antibacterial gel. Slowly his eyes drifted to the trees as he tried desperately to drown out the two monster’s angry argument. 

For a brief moment he could have sworn he saw a demonic toothy grin in the darkness.

He put it down to a trick of the shadows.

“Robin hold still a second, You’re getting blood everywhere.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Next chapter coming soon, so stay tuned! Please let me Know what you think! <3)


	3. Poenaliter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Something is lurking in the trees. Not a single boat floats on the horizen. Something is messed up about this island and Harry can sense it. Now Robin is Injured and Tony is halucinating from the venom. Will they find out what's going on before someone gets killed? And do monsters exist?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes: Sorry for the long wait for this one! Thanks for the kudos everyone. Please leave a comment if you’re enjoying the story, they really motivate me to keep going with it. I’m a slow writer but I have big plans for this story. I’m hoping to push for ten chapters (50,000 words), I’m not sure if I have the follow through to make it work but I’ll do my best! 
> 
> Poenaliter – Meaning the highest form of Punishment.

Poenaliter

\--

Night was long. The ground was hard, the forest was full of noises, no-one slept well.

Harry had tried to doze off several times but was consistently woken by the slightest rustle of leaves or the cracking of twigs. Living with murderers could give you paranoia like that. The other two didn’t seem to be doing much better, Robin couldn’t find a comfortable position to lay down on the rock hard ground that wouldn’t pain his stab wound. Manny mostly seemed awake through worry for everyone else.

The two psychopaths didn’t seem to be in much better shape, though Harry doubted they needed nearly as much sleep as humans did, if any at all.

Paige had stayed up a significant amount of the night drawing in the dirt with her ink and trying to get a reaction out of Tony by teasing him about the snake bite. Joking that she would kill him and then pulling away her sharp pencil and laughing at his disappointed expression. Tony seemed persistent not to give her a reaction, knowing she was childish enough to want to do it more. 

Tony’s condition seemed to gradually worsen through the night too. At first he had been pacing around, which Harry had found mildly irritating. Then at some point in the night he seemed to get too shaky and dizzy and instead had quietly slumped down next to a tree, he hadn’t moved from here most of the night except for once or twice he had seen him swear under his breath and stammer off drunkenly into the trees, Harry guessed probably to puke or worse, it sounded like a pretty nasty poison.

Manny, at one point, seemed to have taken pity on the clock man and had crawled over and wrapped his now dry raincoat over him as an attempt to stop him trembling.   
Tony unsurprisingly had simply tossed the coat to one side and tried to stab the child, fortunately he was seeing double at this point and seemed to miss terribly and quickly gave up, just offering the boy a warning grunt.

They all noticed but said nothing as the clock man crawled over to retrieve the coat an hour later and curled up silently with it for the rest of the night, snuggling it as if it were a comfort blanket of sorts.

By morning, Paige seemed to be the only one actually asleep. Harry guessed her poofy dress probably offered her at least some protection from the rocky ground.

Harry was the first one to actually get up, there was a sharp rock sticking into the back of his left shoulder and his eyes felt like they were full of grit. Groggily he sat up and scooted himself over to river to splash his face. For a brief second he swore he saw a face staring back at him that wasn’t his reflection. A couple of harsh blinks sent it away and he shook it off. The lack of sleep was doing him no good. Still, this island gave him the creeps big time. The sooner they got off of it, the better.

“Rise and shine, let’s see if we can flag down a boat or something.” He whispered to Manny who was curled up near the river bed in the slightly softer dirt. 

The young boy sat and stretched, clicking his shoulders a little and rubbing one eye. “I didn’t get any sleep Harry.” He murmured wearily.

“Yeah I noticed. C’mon, you can nap on the boat home I promise.” The red head reassured gently, rubbing the boys shoulder before pushing himself to his feet.

“What about the others?” Manny asked in sudden concern as he noticed the other turning towards the beach without a second thought.

Harry turned back, scratching his scruffled chin slightly and wrinkling his nose as he glanced around. “Tony looks half dead and Robin needs to rest off his injuries. There’s no way in hell I am waking Paige up, you remember what happened last time right?”

Manny shivered violently and quickly stumbled to his feet, grabbing the older man’s arm to follow him.

“I can hear you. You’re not leaving me here with THEM.” Robin hissed audibly from his place on the ground leaning against a knarled old tree.

Harry’s head immediately snapped to Paige and there was a moments silence as they all waited in a tense watching session, the moment she loudly snored into the dirt his eyes darted back to Robin and narrowed softly. “Careful.” He whispered strongly, sighing a groggy and hefty sigh. “You can come if you can walk by yourself. Try not to strain your injury too much.”

As Robin strained and pulled himself into a shaky stand, another voice broke the eerie silence of the clearing.

“I’m coming too.” The clockwork man growled bitterly, his voice shook slightly as he spoke.

Robin raised an eyebrow at the man on the ground as he held his injured shoulder and stretched his knees. 

There was sweat dripping down the monsters head and he looked almost the colour of spoiled cheese, he clearly wasn’t fit for doing much other than curling up to die. Still, he dragged himself to his feet, clinging to the tree he’d been slumped against for support. It was strangely amusing to watch, it wasn’t often they got to see the man in such a vulnerable state, other than the few times one of them had walked in on the end of a fight between the two monsters. Those situations never ended well.

“Not to be rude or anything but you don’t look too hot right now, maybe you should just rest. We’ll come back for you both if we manage to flag down a ship.” Harry assured awkwardly. He was only half lying, though he’d love to leave the two awful psychopaths to die on this deserted island he doubted he’d have the conscience to do so when the time came. Sometimes he wondered whether it was human empathy or some sick side effect of Stockholm syndrome. 

“Bullshit.” The clock man spat at him rudely, clearly manors had gone out of the window for the man at the same time he’d lost his breakfast. His eyes didn’t look entirely focused and it was slightly creepy.

The green haired man crossed his arms and tapped his foot, letting out a small huff. He’d come across strangely confident, maybe it was the lack of sleep, he’d never been a morning person. “…Are you well enough to stop us if we just go without you?”.

When the man only snarled in response, Robin smirked and began walking in the direction of the beach. Manny looked hesitant for a moment, glancing between his green haired friend and the blue monster. One swift decision later led him to flashing Tony an apologetic look before hopping after his friend.

Harry watched as Tony slunk down the tree slightly in defeat as his shaky knees gave out, he had a look as if he was going to murder them very violently the second he was recovered. “We’ll bring you some water and fruit at lunch time if we have no luck with the boats….” He murmered lowly, hoping maybe the gesture of kindness would buy him a swifter death later.

As he turned to follow his friends he was once again halted by the mans voice.

“They’re in the forest and they’re coming for us.”

The words sent a slight shiver down the man’s spine and he gripped his own shirt uncomfortably. “What’s in the forest, Tony?”

“The monsters. I saw them. They’re coming. They’re going to eat us.” He hissed as if it was some kind of conspiracy.

Harry felt his shoulders untense a little and he sighed in relief. Clearly this was just the hallucinations Robin had mentioned. The clock man was hallucinating because of the venom.

“There’s no monsters Tony. The only monsters on this island are you and Paige. Real monsters don’t exist. You’re not well. Get some rest.”

“THEY’RE COMING FOR YOU.” The man suddenly cried out with a forceful bout of venom in his voice, slamming his fist against the tree hard enough for it to shake and shed a few leaves. Something about the look in his eyes was unnerving, almost scary. Harry had seen the man look at him with psychotic eyes before, that look before he skinned him alive or set him on fire, but this was a different look. There was something vulnerable about his expression. He’d almost go as far as to call it nervous.

“I’m gonna go now….” Harry heard himself say before he even registered his own words. He quickly turned on his heal and speed walked in the direction his friends had gone.  
“THEY’RE HIDING IN THE DARK. EYES LIKE LIT CANDLES. TEETH LIKE BARBED WIRE. THEY’RE IN THE SHADOWS. THEY’RE COMING. THEY’RE COMING.”

Harry shivered violently as the man’s voice got quieter and eventually faded into the background noise of the forest. He caught up with his friends quickly, having long legs had it’s perks.

“I think Tony’s gone off the deep end.” He murmered to Robin, who in return snorted through his nose.

“Shame we don’t have a camera.”

“It’s creepier than it is funny. Plus he’s defiantly going to kill us later.”

“Ahh he’d kill us later either way. Might as well take the upper hand while we’ve got the chance.”

Harry felt Manny move closer and hold onto his arm in nerves, gently he placed a hand on the boys fluffy tuft of blue hair. “Don’t worry, we’re going to get a boat out of here. With any luck we’ll get one fast and maybe we won’t have to see those two again within our lifetime.” He remarked softly.

Manny didn’t look reassured much, just held the man’s arm tighter. At this point he could sense when his older friends were being positive just to humour him. All three of them knew the chances of them escaping the monsters were slim to none.

The three arrived at the sea after about half an hour of walking, slowed by Robin’s injured pace. The sand was almost crystal white and the gentle turquoise waves shimmered like diamonds as they crashed against the shore rhythmically. It would have been gorgeous if they weren’t trapped and scared.

“I’ll patrol the beach around the island to search for boats. Manny you collect rocks and try to write a message in the sand with them in case planes fly over. Robin you don’t move too much, you need to heal. Try to start a fire if you can. Smoke signals might grab the attention of ships.” Harry murmured decisively, dipping one foot in the cool water. It was icy cold but pleasant. 

“When did you learn so much about escaping islands?” Robin snorted, plonking his butt down in a comfy sand heap to rest on. Raising his eyebrows at the redhead.

“I watched Lost once with Manny. Not sure how accurate my information is but unless you have a better idea.” He murmured in return, starting to wander down the beach, ducking a little closer to the trees to steal some shade from the blazing sun. 

“Stay safe, don’t talk to strangers!” The green haired man called after him with a chuckle.

Harry rolled his eyes and shoved his hands in his pockets, not dignifying his friend with a response. His eyes drifted to the trees for a moment as he sighed a small sigh of exhaustion. He wondered slightly whether Paige had woken up yet, and how long it would take her to find them. He wondered how much longer it would take Tony to die or heal. He wondered how much time they had to escape before the real monsters came for him.

A part of him wondered if there was an element of truth to the delusional Clock’s ramblings. He wasn’t a very paranoid person by nature, poison could mess up your head but surely it couldn’t change your personality. Maybe he had seen something in the trees.

His eyes darted back to the clear horizon to search for boats.

\--

The rainbow haired monster stirred in her slumber as she heard her partner in crime shout something about monsters. It didn’t leave her caring enough to wake up. It was only an hour later when he started drunkenly singing that she finally cracked open her groggy eyes to give the treetops and sky the ultimate pissed off glare. 

“Will you shut the fuck up. I know your over-inflated brain is full of toxins but it’s earlyyyy.” She whined viciously, her deceptively sweet voice laced with venom as she propped herself up to glance at the slowly dying man.

“IIIIIII’m forever bloooowing bubbles, preeetty bubbles in the aaair”

“What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“Waaay up high, nearly reach the sky, like my dreams they fade and diiie”

“Will you shut your stupid face! Don’t make me cut your tongue out.”

“Would you rather I sing my time song?”

“GOD no!”

She sat up properly and rubbed her temples sorely, glaring at the man as he woozily tried to stand against a tree trunk, tugging his too-tight bowtie loose to hang around his neck. “If this is a stupid attempt to annoy me into killing you, it’s not gonna work. I’d rather see you die in a slow and undignified manor to fuel my entertainment than waste a perfectly good turn on a quick trash death, even if you are irritating.”

Tony slumped back down the tree and conked on the ground on his butt, woozily wobbling from side to side a little, his eyes were very glazed over and she could tell he was in bad shape and defiantly delusional, no doubt. He coughed violently into his hand for a moment before giggling slightly at nothing. She noticed he’d hacked up blood into his pristine white gloves and she stuck her tongue out in slight disappointment. 

“I thought you’d last longer. It’s just a bit of snake venom. Maybe you’re going soft.”

“Fuck off, love.”

“Where’s the others?” She demanded grouchily, narrowing her eyes.

The man looked up at her through half closed eyelids, his head looked too heavy to hold up and he blinked a few times with a giggle before registering the words. “….Bbbboats.” He replied simply, grinning at her smugly as if he’d just outsmarted her.

Paige rolled her eyes and turned in the direction of the beach. “I’m going to find them, even those three idiots are going to offer me more intellectual entertainment than you are going to in your condition.” She declared. “Come find me when you wake up.”

“Yooooou won’t get very far. The monsters are here. They’ve been here for a while.” He responded promptly, sliding down and collapsing on his side. He was clearly circling the drain, even his voice was weak. The man took small struggled breaths and shivered against the hot solid ground, still he looked smug even in his dying slump. “I don’t tell you often enough how much I hate you. IIIIIII hate you!” He chirped adoringly.

“Oh please. You’re worried about monsters of all things? Really dearest, I expected better from you. Even on your death bed, believing in monsters is rather pathetic don’t you-“

Paige cut off quite suddenly as her eyes locked on the shadowed forest. Her mouth pressed into a thin line as she involuntarily started backing up slowly, not from fear but rather from surprise. She perched herself silently on the floor next to the clock man. Her mocking long abandoned as her mouth hung open slightly agape. “Whu-“

“Told yoooou.” The clock half murmured into the hard clay ground, closing his heavy eyes for a moment.

Paige had no words. She stared into the shadows in silence, trying to make sense of things.

“Monsters don’t exist, Tony.” She murmured, locking stares with the hundreds of eyes staring back at her.

\--

The empty horizon was driving Harry a little bit mad. He wondered how long he’d been walking, it felt like hours. The sun looked pretty high up in the sky, it must be almost lunchtime and he still hadn’t spotted a single boat or plane. It was strangely unnerving to not hear the constant tic-toc of the many hundreds of clocks they had around the house. He almost missed knowing what time it was.

Just when he was debating turning back, Harry spotted a familiar two shapes at the other end of the beach, one yellow one green. Had he really walked all the way around the island already? That didn’t seem right.

Either way he hurried over, more in a faster paced walk than a run, it was blisteringly hot.

Manny had finished writing “Help us” in huge letters with the stones he’d found, it was a little messy but harry guessed probably legible. Robin had piled up some twigs and leaves and was still grouchily banging together two stones to try to make a spark to get the fire lit. The idea of sitting near a fire in this heat was unbearable anyway, Harry could feel sweat drenching his sweater.

“Did you spot anything?” Robin asked, dropping his two rocks in disappointment as he saw the other man jog over. He rubbed the sweat from his head and shifted his injured shoulder, wincing a little in discomfort as he did.

“Nothing, sorry. It’s almost eerily bare out there. No boats, no planes, no helicopters. Blank horizon as far as the eye can see in every direction.”

“Maybe the monsters ate all the boats.” Robin snorted gently, leaning back in the soft sand with a grin.

Harry rolled his eyes. “I’d watch it. He might have died and come back by now, you know how quiet those two can be when they want to be, they could be listening at any time. I don’t think he’d take well to your jokes.”

“Things are shit Harry, if I want to make light of the situation then I will. Watching that freak of nature hallucinate was the funniest thing I’ve ever seen.”

“Well if you say so, but you’ve clearly never watched one of those ‘people getting hit in the crotch’ video compilations.”

The younger boy suddenly stood up and dusted the sand off of his pants, grabbing the two men’s attention away from their nervous banter. “What if there really are monsters? If Tony and Paige exist then what if there’s other monsters in the world? If they aren’t human then surely there’s other not-human things out there.”

Robin scratched his chin slightly and closed his eyes with a shug. “I’m more convinced that those two are spawns of Satan and are some strange anomaly that really shouldn’t exist in this reality or any other. If there were others if whatever the fuck those two are, it would have been all over the news by now. I think we’re fine Manny.”

“I mean, yeah it seems unlikely that there’s monsters in the woods. Tony’s just hallucinating. But it does seem kind of eerie here don’t you think? Maybe we’re not alone, We haven’t explored even a fraction of the forest. There could even be indigenous tribes here or larger animals.” Harry murmured. Honestly he wanted to laugh along with Robin, but something had been giving him the creeps about this island from the very start. Maybe it was just the heat but he felt like they defiantly weren’t alone.

“Maybe we should go back and stay with Tony and Paige? If there are monsters then maybe they can fight them off.” Manny suggested gently, playing with his fingers in an unsure fashion.

Even the thought caused Robin to fall about laughing. Harry couldn’t much muffle his amused snort too. Paige and Tony protecting them? He did wonder what weird world many lived in sometimes. If anything, those two monsters would throw them to whatever unpleasant thing lurked in the trees and they’d probably laugh as the three humans got eaten.  
“Manny’s right though, we probably should go and find Paige and Tony. I’d feel safer knowing where they are at all times.” Harry muttered gently, offering down a hand to help the green haired man stand up. Robin took it and hoisted himself to his feet, rubbing his sore shoulder a bit.

“You’re crazy. You don’t walk out of the wolf den to escape the wolves then walk back in to remind yourself where the wolves are.”

“Are you coming or not?”

“…Yes. But only because I’m hot and the forest is shady.”

 

\--

Paige held an inky hand to the left side of her stomach, or more, the blood soaked hole where the left side of her stomach had been. Her poofy white dress was torn and stained heavily with blood and ink and sweat and in her free hand she clutched her last sharpened pencil as tight as she could. 

A fifth sludgy creature hurled itself at her and she rammed the pencil into one of its eyes. It was a lumbering great beast, at least the size of a bear, with six or seven piercing red eyes and skin that dripped and oozed like shimmering black oil. There was a few lain in their own blood against the trees but more continued to crawl out of the shadows every moment. They smelled awful, even to Paige, like rotten fish and burnt tarmac. She couldn’t help but wrinkle her nose every time one came close.

“What the fuck are you?” She snapped as another rammed her forwards from behind, she swung around instantly and stabbed at its chest. “Some kind of big dog caught in an oil spill?”

It snarled and roared, spittle flying from its jaunty crooked teeth as it got close to her face. It’s breath smelled even worse.

She laughed and grinned at it manically as she spat ink into its eye and shoved her pencil through its squishy flesh. “Don’t you know who you’re dealing with? I’m not your dinner honey, you’re my dinner.”

She heaved the screaming beast off of her and snapped her head around as she heard the muffled scream of her partner in crime, catching sight just in time to see one of the sludgy creatures pick him up by his head and ram him into a tree, holding his blue head so hard against the trunk that she could see air bubbles from his harsh breathing bubbling through the monsters liquid oil hand.

She giggled wildly and put her pencil wielding hand to her hip for a moment as she watched with her bloodthirsty gaze. “Having fun there love? Struggling are we?” She asked in her sickeningly patronising tone.

She heard his muffled scream into the oily skin he was drowning in, before by chance more than anything he swung his red sword just in the right way to sever the monster’s hand. He fell to the ground with a thud and hacked up blood and oil for a good few moments. “I don’t struggle dear.” He called back at her weakly, slumping into the tree trunk and holding up his sword as best he could to try to keep back the handless monster.

She opened her mouth to respond with more mocking though was cut off as another monster rammed it’s ugly head into the small of her back and send her slamming face first into a tree. She snarled into its bark as she heard her partner laughing hysterically through his wheezy coughs.

“How many more of these bastards are there going to be? I’m beginning to tire of this STUPID GAME.” She shrieked, forcing herself away from the tree and turning around to punch the monster square in the face. It didn’t do quite as much damage as her pencil but it defiantly knocked the creature off guard.

Paige stepped back and put her inky hand back to her heavily bleeding side. Shit, she was getting dizzy from blood loss. This wasn’t a good time to die. What if those idiot three had found a boat by now? She didn’t fancy being stuck on this island without any students to play with.

She stumbled a little bit and leaned her shoulder against a tree, starting to see double to some degree. Shit shit shit.

The rainbow haired woman heard Tony’s laughter get halted as once again one of the creatures hurled itself at him and pinned him to the ground with its huge sludgy hands. This time he dropped his sword with a violent clatter and it sent a mild shiver down her spine knowing that he was done for and she was going to be tackling these assholes alone in a moment, (not that he was contributing much in his state anyways).

She turned back upon the beast and lifted her bloodied pencil to kill it, only pausing as she heard a delightfully familiar squeal. She recognised it from none other than her favourite little blue haired victim.

With a merciless beam she turned to the three as they emerged in horror from the shadowed trees. “Welcome back, we made some new friends while you were out playing.” She hissed through her teeth.

Harry could tell she was beyond pissed, it made his stomach uneasy.

“What the fuck are those oh my god what the fuck are those oh god oh god-“ Robin hyperventilated in a blind panic, grabbing the taller red head’s arm and backing up a few steps as he locked eyes with one of the oily beasts.

“I was hoping you could tell me.” The woman snarled at him, hurling her pencil into the one pinning Tony down by his mouth. The creature screeched a hideous sound like a banshee and loosened its grip just enough for the suffocating man to yank its oily hand from his mouth, sucking in a heavy tortured breath.

“Oh do stop choking love, it’s not very becoming of you.” She muttered, rolling her eyes and turning back to the three victims. “I’d suggest running but then I wouldn’t get to see the pretty look on your faces as you all get slaughtered by the little friend coming to give you a hug from behind.

Harry’s eyes widened in panic as he swung around just in time to see the huge, hideous creature behind him swinging it’s giant fist towards his face. His eyes snapped shut in terror and he felt himself squeeze his hands into fearful fists, flinching back hard as the oily appendage came towards him.

A second later.

Three seconds later.

He heard Manny scream again but felt no pain, no force, no broken nose. Was he dead?

He hesitantly cracked open one eye. The first thing the redhead saw was Paige standing a few meters back looking bewildered, he’d never seen such a disgustedly confused look on that devious little witches face before and it was unnerving. 

His head snapped around to where the monster should be. Oil was splattered over the trees as if it had exploded all over everything.  
Robin looked in shock, Manny looked terrified.

In the trees stood a figure, a man with bushy black hair and soft turquoise skin that reminded Harry of the ocean. Around his shoulders was a yellow cape with faded shapes embroidered into it. He stood proud and tall and wielded a handsome gold rapier similar to Tony’s but rather than a decorative clock hand it looked like an arrow with a heart forming the tip.

There was a silence in the clearing as the man slotted his sword back into its bloodied sheath and narrowed his eyes at the people before him.

The remaining creatures began to slink back into their shadows. Tony slumped back into a heap on the floor, coughing blood into the grass. Paige leaned her back against a tree and held her bloodied side, she glared directly at the man and grit her teeth with venom.

“Love.” She spat with a sickening bite. Obvious she recognised the man and was the last thing from pleased to see their saviour.

The man was silent for a moment, using his gloved thumb to wipe a stray blob of oil from his cheek. He screwed his nose up as he watched the woman carefully, keeping one hand on the hilt of his sword. “Creativity, Time. They caught you at last.” He responded in a most disgusted tone, clearly just as unhappy to see her too. “You brought friends?”

“What the fuck is going on? Why are you here?” She snarled.

The man chucked lightly in response, folding his arms in a smug way as a smirk creeped onto his lips, clearly glad he was more knowledgeable about the situation than her.

“Dear dear me. You have no idea how much trouble you’re in, do you?”

The woman growled threateningly, clearly beyond frustrated by his tone. Before anyone could blink she’d rolled to one side, snatched her sharpest pencil from the slimy flesh of one of the bodies, and approached the man with it held threateningly towards his throat. 

The turquoise skinned man didn’t look phased, he moved his hands to his hips and grinned, leaning down slightly to glare her in the eyes.

“Welcome to Insulam Poenaliter , Creativity.” He sneered.

Harry noticed the inky woman’s face fall and her pupils shrink, the very sight made his own stomach twist in fear.

 

“You’re here to be punished, and if you die on the island... you won’t come back.”


	4. Philomisia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The trio meet new life on the island, and discover a lot more about the mystery behind their murderous housemates. Meanwhile Tony is circling the drain and Paige isn't doing much better, it's up to a new pair of hands to save them now. They're not the most popular pair either, on this island of hell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the patience with this one again! I'm pretty slow at writting this stuff.  
> Things should be unraveling a little in this one hopefully, there's a few new faces but don't worry, the story is still gonna focus on everyone's favourite murdernerds and their trafficlight trip housemates.  
> Thank you all so much for the comments and Kudos on my last chapter! Please keep leaving comments if you can, seriously every comment I get motivates me to write like a thousand words heck. I read all of them and they are the only thing keeping me pumped for this some days.  
> Anyway, enjoy the chapter! I'd love to hear your thoughts on it!
> 
> Quick Tw: Violence, blood, lowkey mentions of Vomit.
> 
> Philomisia - Meaning to hate love.
> 
> \--

Philomisia

\--

The sun cast shadows through the thick tree leaves, making surreal and beautiful patterns on the dusty forest floor as they walked. Harry’s eyes ached from lack of sleep and his feet grew sore from the walking.

They’d been walking for a good half hour now at least. More than the various pains and sunburn, the most uncomfortable part was their new company.

The cloaked figure lead in the front, he’d been talking to a moderately injured Paige about fix feet in front of them, just out of earshot. Harry occasionally heard snippets of their convocation but nothing legible. He had no doubt that if the psychopathic woman was slightly less injured she’d have impaled the newcomer by now, she looked and sounded beyond pissed off. A tone of voice that made Harry and his two friend’s blood run cold.

Harry and Manny followed the two monsters in front as close as possible without invading their space, Harry didn’t want to be too far from them in case there was another attack from whatever those…things were.

Robin had drawn the short straw and was walking behind them trying to carry the severely unwell clock man, who couldn’t seem to put one foot in front of the other anymore and kept either bursting into random bouts of song or passing out every few minutes. Harry couldn’t help but find it amusing, he didn’t wish misfortune on his friend but it did sort of serve him right for making fun of the man earlier. Plus, Robin was significantly shorter than the clock man and watching the monster that had smugly tormented them so many times now look so out of control and helpless with his feet dragging along the dusty ground beside Robin was nothing short of hilarious.

The redhead tried to keep his smirking to a minimum, it wasn’t the time for amusement. They were all in grave danger and every bizaar thing that happened seemed to keep narrowing their chances of getting home safely more and more.

“Harry, was that man telling the truth when he said if Paige and Tony die they won’t come back again?”

Harry snorted slightly and put his larger hand on the younger boys head gently. He opened his mouth to offer the child an ‘I don’t know’, which was all he had to answer most of the boy’s monster related questions with, though he was cut off by Robin.

“Let’s hope so. I’d be a thousand percent more motivated to escape this hellish place if I knew we wouldn’t be bringing these two back with us.” The man snapped, shifting his weight and stumbling as the monster on his back moved sharply. “STAY STILL OR I’LL DUMP YOU IN A RIVER.”

Harry noticed the violent sociopath of a woman twist her head an eerie 180 degrees to glance at them with warning eyes. He gulped dryly and resumed walking at a faster pace, keeping his eyes forward. “Calm down Robin.”

“You calm down!” He snapped back crankily. “I’ll calm down when I don’t have to carry an intoxicated cereal killer!”

“Mmm not intoxcox-oxid…..yur intoxicoxic.” The half conscious demon slurred, woozily grabbing a handful of the mans hair and tugging it hard, making poor Robin shriek.

“M’going to be sick…”

“IF YOU THROW UP ON ME I SWEAR T-“

He paused as his eyes suddenly met with the psychotic woman who seemed to appear almost by magic in front of him, her eyes spelling murder. His heart stopped and his blood ran cold.

“Is there a problem back here?” She asked, her voice sickeningly sweet and filled with an icy venom.

“….N-no.”

“Are we going to play nice now so that the grown-ups can talk in peace?”

“I’m-“

“Good.” She hissed through her teeth, patting the green haired man’s cheek a little too hard, her eyes screaming a warning. Robin shut his mouth. Her eyes moved to those of the clock’s.

“Are we still alive, dearest?”

“I think m’in hell. Some kind of hideous demon is looking at me.”

She grabbed his cheek and squeezes it like an over-enthused grandma, grinning at him violently as she broke a few blood vessels and watched him wince in pain. “Keep it down back here or I’ll let the brat dump you in a ditch, got it?”

“I don’t take ordr-eres….from you…” He snarled back, woozily bobbing his head, trying to stay conscious. 

She poked his nose with her sharp little finger and narrowed her eyes. “Take a nap, you’ll be less annoying that way.” She hissed, doing an about-turn and marching back to the front to re-join the mysterious cloaked stranger.

“I don’t….I don’t do what….you say….I don’t….” The man seemed to try to murmur, only to press his face against Robin’s shoulder and conk out barely a few seconds later.

The green haired man looked peeved, though this time he said nothing.

“If you’re quite done messing around, we’re almost there.” The cloaked man hummed out gruffly, pulling down his hood and narrowing his eyes at them.

Harry took in the man properly for the first time. His soft bush of black hair framed his face in curly rivulets and his cold turquois skin was splattered with tiny golden freckles which caught the sunlight. His eyes were as pink as rose quartz , perhaps it was the light playing tricks on him but he was sure the man’s pupils looked like love hearts. Despite the colourfulness of his appearance, he looked hardened and empty, like a prisoner of war. His expression was bitter and his shoulders tense. Harry noticed that his grubby, torn cloak didn’t quite sit right around his back, it was almost as if he had wings folded up under there or something.

“Um…where is it exactly that we’re going, mister Love?” Manny suddenly asked, tearing Harry’s focus back to reality.

The cloaked monster narrowed his eyes for a moment, then smiled a toothy grin that was far too familiar a psychotic look. Harry put a protective hand in front of the boy.

“Dear me, where are my manors? You three must be so frightened and confused.” The man suddenly sprung cheerfully, turning to approach them a little too quickly. He stopped dead barely a few inches in front of the redhead and the younger boy, smiling a deceptively sweet grin and crossing his arms behind his back innocently. 

“I don’t know why or how you ended up here, a mistake on Justice’s part I assume. This is no place for humans and I have no doubt that someone will be by to rescue you soon enough, that is, if you survive until then.” He explained, patting Manny’s cheek reassuringly. “Tell me child, do you believe in love?”

Harry was about to tug Manny away and interject when he was beaten to the task and the inky rainbow haired monster grabbed the man back harshly by the back of his cape.

“Back off Love, those are OUR students.” She hissed, grinning at him with wide and threatening eyes.

The man simply tugged his cape back and chuckled, turning and resuming his place at the front, much to Manny’s relief. “You’re in no state to keep them, Creativity. If it’s not me who takes them it will only be someone worse. Human starved Concepts are not people you want to argue with, some Concepts have been trapped for years, they’re hardly distinguishable in character to the Leviathans that just attacked you, though much more dangerous.”

Paige grunted through her grit teeth and begrudgingly followed him. Harry noticed her inky hand move to hold her oozing bloody side and she stumbled slightly every few steps. It unnerved him that she hadn’t healed by now. He couldn’t help but wonder if they really could die here.

Love pushed through some brambles and used his thin sword to slice through thickets, after a few moments he opened up a path into a secluded area of forest which seemed to inhabit treehouses, at least four or five of them, and a few shelters on the ground built up between trees. Manny looked in awe, Harry just felt more confused.

“This was really the best you could do?” Paige snarked rudely, glancing around in disappointment. 

The cloaked man seemed to grimace slightly and gave her a look of annoyance. “Our powers have been sapped, we worked with what we had. Most of our energy goes into shielding ourselves from the leviathans and the rouges.”

“How many have gone rouge?”

He began wandering towards the wooden shelters, “Too many. Only last week Order went mad, he killed three people.”

“Order was always weak.” Paige rolled her eyes and followed, Harry continued to lead the others behind her in silence.

“Our numbers are dwindling. You’re just lucky that Healing is still here or Time would be as good as dead and you’d be not far behind.”

“It’s just a flesh wound, I’m perfectly capable of surviving a little gouge to my vessel without Healing’s help. Not all of us are pathetic like you, Love.”

“Remind me again who was the one who saved your lives barely a few hours ago?”

“Oh shut it.”

“That’s what I thought.”

Harry glanced around at the huts build high up in the trees, they were built from mud and twigs and yet there was something oddly unhuman about them. Who was living here? It seemed very quiet, as if the inhabitants has sensed them coming and hid. The caped man that went by the name of Love kept referring to Paige, Tony and himself as ‘Concepts’. This only opened up more questions.

Whoever they were, they were all being punished by being here for some reason. A jail full of other monsters like Tony and Paige didn’t seem like the safest place to be.

His thoughts were once again interrupted as they approached a grounded mud hut, Love paused in front of the door before rapping on it a few times tunefully. “Nature, Healing, open up, we have some SPECIAL guests today.” He called out purposefully mocking the two psychopathic monsters they were traveling with.

Paige balled her hands into fists but didn’t raise them, only gave him a threatening snarl. It was unnerving to watch the violent inky woman stay in her place, it made Harry’s stomach flip. If she was being this submissive then something was clearly very wrong. These people clearly weren’t to be messed with.

The door cracked open and a short woman with a pale green complexion and fiercely grumpy eyes faced them. She was a wide lady with knotted blue hair tied back in a bun, she wore a beautiful gown made entirely of live flowers and had a small golden dagger with a handle like a curled vine tied to her ankle just above her bare feet.

She bore her teeth at them slightly and narrowed her eyes at Love, who only grinned smugly at her. “Creativity and Time? Leave them in the forest to be mauled. We don’t want them here.” She spat rudely.

Paige gave her the middle finger and grimaced, “Pleasure to see you again too, Nature.”

Harry was so confused, he decided not to interrupt. Part of him wondered whether he should grab Manny and escape while they still could.

“Look, we’re all criminals here. You can try to play goodie goodie suck up to the great Voices and the council now if you want to, but they’re not going to welcome you back with open arms no matter what you do.” Love declared to the disgruntled woman. “Time has maybe an hour left to live, Creativity has maybe a day.”

“I have more than a day to live you twit. I’ve had paper cuts worse than this.”

Love rolled his eyes and raised his brows at the green woman. “Do you really want more blood on your hands?”

Nature seemed to curl her face up and snarl bitterly, but begrudgingly she opened the door a little wider. “If either of them lays a finger on Healing, I’ll drown them both alive and you as well.”

“Thank you, Nature” Love smiled, his tone of voice was so cheerful and cocky. She punched him in the arm as he walked in and he stumbled a bit, though ignored it.  
Harry protectively held Manny’s shoulder and hesitated to go any further. “I don’t trust this place or any of these people. We should head back to the beach and search for ships.” He murmered, taking a small step back.

“You won’t find ships here. There is no way off of this place. If there was, Concepts would have found it by now. We are a lot smarter and stronger than humans and we have been here for a long time.” Nature responded to him calmly, her expression softening slightly. “Your best chance of survival is with us. No Concept in the safe zone is going to harm a human, it goes against our moral code.”

“Well that’s bullshit, Tony and Paige harm us all the time. Why would we trust any of you sick demons?” Robin snapped, narrowing his eyes at the woman.

Harry glared daggers at his friend. “What is with your pepper today? You’re going to get us killed.”

“Time and Creativity are a disgrace to our perfect society and should have been caught and punished a long time ago.” Nature interrupted impatiently. “Are you coming in or not, the heat is getting in with the door open. Healing likes to work in cooler conditions.”

“Fine. But only because I’m already covered in blood and at least one other body fluid and I want to put Tony down somewhere before he vomits on me too. Not because I trust you.” Robin snarked as he pushed past the woman.

Nature seemed strangely cool about his attitude and turned in silence to lead him in. Harry noticed two nasty scars on her back, almost like burnt gouges in her flesh. Small feathers seemed to be painfully pushing through her skin around them, it was almost as if she’d once had wings like a bird. She disappeared around a corner before he had a chance to ask about them. Her voice trailed back to them. 

“Close the door behind you.”

As if she just expected them to follow.

Manny glanced up at Harry and he sighed at he held the younger boys hand. “Remind me to kick Robin’s ass when we get home.”

\--

He couldn’t deny that it was pretty impressive what they’d managed to do with a mud hut, there were at least eight triangular shaped rooms all walled up with paste and leaves, working doors, and the floors were very clean, there was hardly any dust. The air was cool inside and it was a welcome change from the extremely hot muggy weather outside. Harry hadn’t realised how sunburnt his skin was until now, even his eyelids hurt when he blinked. Manny didn’t look great either, his usual pale skin was bright red and peeling around his nose and the corners of his mouth.

In each room was a few little stretchers, some had figures curled up on them. It was hard to make out faces as they walked past quickly, most were covered with blankets. Some had wings, huge wings that couldn’t even fit in the small rooms and were stretched out and bent uncomfortably against the walls, stray feathers littered the floors. 

“Are they angels?” Manny asked quietly, squeezing Harry’s hand. 

“I don’t know, I don’t think so Manny. Don’t make eye contact okay.”

They followed Nature into the last room, where Robin had dumped Tony roughly onto an empty stretcher and another figure was making convocation with Love. It was another woman, this time a little taller. She had almost paper white skin like Paige did, but her hair was white too and fluffed around her head like wool on a sheep. She wore a light blue gown and had many tiny diamonds sewed into the dress as well as draped around her neck and wrists like jewellery. Her hands were clad in opera gloves, she almost looked like she was going to a ball and it was very out of place for a little mud shack, in fact, Nature looked out of place too, and Love. All of these people, like Tony and Paige, were dressed almost like aristocrats. They defiantly didn’t look like the sort of people who usually lived in mud huts and pooped in the forest.

Tony curled into a small ball and coughed violently, hacking up blood onto the floor. Paige lifted an inky leg and drove a sharp little heal into his back. “Do be quiet dear, you are so over dramatic when you’re dying. Really, you ought to be embarrassed.”

The man groaned in pain as her heal drew blood but he weakly curled up tighter instead of lashing out, he didn’t even look like he had the energy to swear at her. He coughed again and gagged from all the blood forcing its way up his throat, then seemed to lose consciousness again and slumped into a shaking sweaty heap.

“Pathetic.” The woman snarked.

Her voice didn’t sound full of malice or disgust, it was more….Harry might even go as far as to say, worried? Upset? He didn’t say anything, she’d surely impale him in an instant. He wondered whether she was even capable of worrying about him. Maybe her violence was just some form of covering for it.

Or maybe heatstroke was just messing with Harry’s head.

“Get on with it and fix him so that we can get out of here. It’s embarrassing watching him writhe and squirm like this, and I SUPPOSE if he died it would be an inconvenience. Who would bring my little play things back when they got broken in my games?”

Manny shivered violently and clung to Harry’s leg, he noticed Robin tug on his own hair in a fear close to madness too.

“You’re sick in the head, Creativity.” Love remarked, narrowing his eyes at her.

She looked about to lash out though was cut off as the woman they seemed to refer to as healing spoke. Her voice was so gentle and almost infuriatingly slow.

“I will do what I can with Time. Though I will require some assistance.”

Paige crossed her arms and bore her teeth, tapping her sharp nails impatiently against her elbows. “What kind of assistance? You’re Healing! Just touch him and get on with it!”

There was a slight silence and the traffic light trio could all feel the tension between the room full of demigods. Both Nature and Healing opened their mouths at the same time but Love cut them off.

“Creativity, have you eaten the fruit, or drunk from the streams since coming here?”

The rainbow haired woman screwed up her face in frustration and pulled a pencil from her hair threateningly. “Of course I have. What the fuck does that have to do with anything?” 

The man looked smug, he crossed his arms and rocked on his heals slightly. “Draw me a picture.”

In less than a second she had him pinned against the wall with the sharp pencil pressed against the soft part of his neck hard enough to draw blood. He closed his eyes, Harry noticed the man take a slightly shaky breath. He wondered whether he should intervene but he didn’t dare. Manny let out a terrified cry and the redhead held him protectively.  
“Come on, do it. Draw me a picture. You already have a pencil.” The turquoise man remarked confidently, grabbing the woman’s wrist tightly and forcing her hand away from his throat. She was weak from blood loss and didn’t fight it, though kept him pressed against the wall.

“I…” She started, trailing off and gritting her teeth, her hand shook violently around her pencil as he squeezed her wrist and after a moment she dropped it.

“You can’t, can you?”

She suddenly bit his hand holding her wrist and he yelped and let go. The demonic woman sank back with a snarl and pressed her back against the cool mud wall on the other side of the room. She took a heavy breath in and shut her eyes. Suddenly she looked almost small and broken; if Harry didn’t know better he would say she was panicking.

“Cheer up dear, I’m sure you have many other fantastic qualities.” Love sneered, his grin was so proud and amused that is was almost annoying.

“Don’t call me dear!” She snapped back breathlessly.

“Love, you’re being mean.” Healing declared slowly. 

“No one here can do their jobs properly, that’s why people get driven to madness. Healing will do what she can, not that Time even deserves it, the useless excuse for a Power.” Nature growled at the woman, turning immediately to storm from the room. “You’re lucky she’s forgiving. I for one have morals and I’m not assisting either of you, I’m going to help someone who deserves help.”

Healing took a deep breath and sighed tiredly. “Angry, everyone is too angry. All you’re doing is giving power to Anger and he’s not a very nice man.” She mused to herself in exhaustion, toddling over to a little table of neat little wooden and stone medical supplies. “He’s got venom running through his blood, correct? He smells strongly of it. It’s too late for any sort of antidote. I can draw the venom from his blood and into his appendix, I have enough of my abilities to be able to do that at the very least. Then all I need is for someone to cut the organ out. He should be fine from then, his body is still strong enough to heal itself from the concussion.”

“Why can’t YOU cut his appendix out?” Paige snapped violently at the woman, though didn’t remove herself from her place plastered against the wall where she was panicking.

“I don’t like blood. It will hinder my surgical performance.”

“UGH! FINE. YOU, UNCREATIVE STUDENT, YOU DO IT.” She snarled, turning to Robin with a look that could burn someone alive. He squeaked an pressed himself against the wall.

“Why don’t you do it? You cut him open all the time, you must be an expert by now.” Manny piped up suddenly, his voice nervous as he clung to Harry’s leg tightly.

She paused for a moment and they all noticed the sickeningly smug grin grow on Loves face.

“Yes Creativity, why DON’T you do it? You are by far the most experienced.” His malicious grin only seemed to grow more as he saw the woman grip the edge of her dress in fury and bite her tongue in the inability to respond. “Or maybe you’re scaaared that you’ll be the one to kill him. He is your little boyfriend after all, if you can even call it that.”

“You piece of shit, he dies by my hand all the time! I don’t have a problem with-“

“With what? Permanently killing him? Knowing that he’ll be gone forever and it will be aaaaaalll your fault? After all, you didn’t stop him from being bitten in the first place, did you?”

“I DON’T CARE IF HE DIES. HE’S JUST AN ANNOYING PEST TO ME ANYWAY. A BOTHERSOME ROOMMATE THAT PICKS FIGHTS ALL THE TIME. “

“Well if he means that little to you then maybe he should just die right now, relieve us of the effort of saving him. “ Love sang to her smugly, drawing his handsome rapier and threateningly holding it to the curled up unconscious Tony’s back. Everyone froze, poor Healing looked like she might faint. “You should have said so sooner and we could have left him to die in the forest with those-“

Love didn’t even finish his sentence before the rainbow haired demon pounced on him, screaming like a crazed animal as she knocked him to the ground and choked him with her sharp inky fingers, violently bashing his head against the ground repeatedly until he bled. “YOU PIECE OF SHIT.”

“ADMIT IT. ADMIT THAT YOU WUUUV HIM.” Love cackled through gasps as he choked, grabbing her wrist with one of his hands and jabbing two fingers from the other into her bloody open wound.

She shrieked in pain and choked him harder.

Harry grabbed Manny under one arm and without pausing to think, grabbed Robin in the other and made a panicked beeline for the door, though was stopped as Nature suddenly charged back in like a furious rhinoceros.

“CAN WE STOP-“ she yelled at the top of her voice, without warning grabbing Paige by the back of her hair and yanking her off of Love so hard that she was hoisted off of her inky little feet. “ACTING LIKE CHILDREN-“ she threw her to the ground apart from Love, then turned and have the man a swift kick in the side “-YOU GROWN CONCEPTS! THIS KIND OF SHIT IS WHY YOU’RE HERE IN THE FIRST PLACE.”

Paige groaned from her spot on the floor, she didn’t try to get back up, her injury oozed painfully and she looked dizzy from blood loss.

Love sat up and held his side slightly, glaring daggers at Nature. Who gave him a similar smug smirk that he had offered her before.

She turned to glance at Healing, who uncovered her eyes for a moment and looked relieved.

“Perhaps Love should take the humans outside so that I may get to work healing the wounded in peace. They could go and fetch Ice, we will need Ice.”

Harry blinked and couldn’t stop himself before he opened his mouth. “Ice? Where are we supposed to find ice on a hot Spanish island with no freezers or-“

He was cut off by Love’s snorting as he stood up, dusting down his cape protectively and resuming a proud stance as if he hadn’t just been beaten to the ground. Nature gave him an amused eyebrow raise too.

“No dear, Ice is a person.” Healing explained slowly after a moment’s pause.

Of course he was. Everything here was a damn person apparently. Harry pulled his hand down his sweaty face and took a heavy breath in through his nose. He realised he was still protectively carrying his two smaller friends and carefully placed them both back on their feet. Many clung to his leg and Robin crossed his arms indignantly.

“Nature will you stay here..” Healing purred sweetly, eyes drifting to Paige who was still writhing on the floor and clawing at her wound. “…For protection?”

\--

Ice hadn’t been difficult to find, they’d spotted him immediately. A cold blue skinned man with white hair and a pointed nose and little icicles hanging from his jacket. He hadn’t graced them with eye contact but instead had scoffed down his nose at them before marching in to assist Healing. Harry felt he was quite rude, though it was obvious that whatever this race of creatures Tony and Paige came from seemed to consider themselves far above humanity in the social order of things.

They’d met a few others in the process of searching for Ice; Fire, Night, Dreams, Chaos, Fear, Sleep, not to mention a few more that Harry hadn’t caught the name of. Everyone looked formally dressed, heads held high in pride, though at the same time slightly scruffy with torn clothes and small injuries and scrapes.

The trio now sat in the seating area of a little wooden house in the trees, the one which belonged to Love. He’d taken the time to make heart shaped window frames for it and Harry couldn’t help but wonder how long the man had been stuck here….and how long THEY would be stuck here.

The man intimidated him, he’d seen that he could be violent, though currently he was calmly sipping what Harry assumed was tea from a small wooden tea cup, relaxing on the log he was treating as a sofa. There were cups out for the three of them too, though no one wanted to be the first to try the hot liquid.

Silence had filled the room since they had arrived. It was only Manny who eventually grew the courage to speak and ask the question they’d all been wondering, at least one of many.

“What is this place?”

“The best translation would be, the Island of Ultimate Punishment. It’s where the naughty Concepts get sent when the Council can’t handle babysitting them anymore. They used to just take our wings and let people fall so the humans could deal with them instead and they could lead an unflattering rest of their existence on this smelly little speck of dust.” Love answered flatly, holding his cup by the rim and swirling it as if it were a glass of whisky. “Then Time and Creativity started causing problems and murdering people and using their powers irresponsibly and the council decided that we couldn’t be trusted anymore and created this hell hole. An island designed to kill Concepts, it strips you of your powers the longer you’re here, then sends awful things out to kill you. This is why no-one here likes your little friends very much. We were all perfectly happy just continuing our existence, some even liked it on earth. They just had to go and ruin it for everyone.”

Harry shifted nervously in his seat and reached for his cup, the heat was pleasant in his hands even though his body was too warm. “Tony and Paige are NOT our friends, more like….kidnappers? Abusers?”

“Evil psychopathic housemates from hell who don’t pay rent and never leave?” Robin pipped in.

“Does this mean there’s other monsters like Tony and Paige around, hurting other families?” Manny asked sympathetically.

“No no, well, doubtful. Those two have been very good at avoiding this place for a very long time. It’s hard to imagine there’s any of us left just roaming around, possibly a few quiet individuals hiding away. Besides, the vast majority don’t care much for hurting Humans. You’re our source of life, as well as entertainment. The more a Human uses or wonders about a Concept, the stronger that Concept gets. Plus it’s funny to watch you all bumble around, bumping into things and thinking you’re improving and developing as a race on your own without a higher power heavily controlling every aspect of your lives.”

Harry noticed Robin grimace and hold his head in one hand in stress. The green haired man had never much liked science fiction or biblical constructs, he was a very bookish guy and this was a lot of nonsensical sounding information to try to wrap ones head around.

Manny sank to the side slightly to wrap his arms around the man for support, leaning his cheek into Robin’s shoulder. There was a pause and then he asked yet another question, his innocent and curious child mind begging for more.

“Why are you being punished?”

The turquoise man pulled his feet onto the table smugly, “There’s a lot of rules to follow when you’re in the council. Some people fall because they are disrespectful to a Power, some people fall because they start wars, some people are too violent and unruly. I am being punished however, simply for doing my job, though I suppose spreading my abilities to my peers maybe wasn’t the most mature thing to do. Everyone deserves love you see, not just Humans, Concepts too. Unfortunately love is seen as something rather….taboo, where we come from. Or more perhaps, illegal. The great Voices feel it distracts from your work. They never appreciated me.” He huffed really rather proudly. “Nature is still rather bitter towards me for causing her to fall, but she’s so clearly happier now that she’s found her special one.”

“Healing?” Manny asked gently. The man nodded at him proudly.

“Look, we are clearly in WAY over our heads here. You’re more than welcome to keep Paige and Tony, do whatever you want with them for all we care. But there must be some way for us to get home? We don’t belong here.” Robin snapped in a slight panic.

Harry glanced at his friend nervously, it was a question that he himself was afraid to ask out of worry for what the answer might well be.

The Concept of Love hummed slightly with a nearly unreadable expression, then slowly downed his entire cup of tea in one hot gulp, putting down his cup a little harshly on the table and pausing for a very long moment.

“…Healing must be finished by now. Let’s go and see your not-friends, hmm?”


	5. The Village

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things are seeming hopeless for Harry, Robin and Manny. Though what's new there?  
> Is there any way to get off of this island for three innocents who don't belong here?  
> Can they risk leaving their lives to Fate, and just praying the island will have Mercy on them? Or will Justice take what is owed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know, I know, another late chapter. What can I say, I am a slow writter doin' my best.  
> I wanna use this chapter note to thank and credit some cool peeps. First off, if you're reading this,THANK YOU. You are a cool peep for reading this far and I love you. I hope you're enjoying reading the story as much as I'm enjoying writting it and I'm honnoured that you're taking the time to take this journy with me.  
> I also wanna thank my sweet and wonderful skype best friend who's been supportive from the start, without you I couldn't have gotten this far and I love you okay. <3  
> I also wanna thank some Tumblr peeps. I owe Mr-Tony-Clock credit because I probably referenced Nature in this story a little too close to their MN Gilbert humanization design wise. They make so many awesome humanizations and great drawings and I 100% suggest that you follow them if you havn't already.  
> I also wanna thank Cosmo-the-artist who has drawn MULTIPLE FANARTS for this story. Seriously I frigging love all your drawings dude, every time I look at them I cry a little and write a thousand more words, you are my inspiration.  
> And also Fettpop who drew Nature and Healing and made them look wicked cute and litterally killed me yesterday heck.  
> You guys are all awesome and I'm gonna work my butt off to get better at writting so that I can keep throwing DHMIS storys at all your faces for years to come.  
> I hope this chapter is okay! I had to cut quite a few bits to make space so hopefully things should start to link up a little in the next chapter.  
> Please let me know what you think!  
> Enjoy~ 
> 
> Quick TW: Blood, Injury, Vomit, Swearing, Alcohol.
> 
> { Also yes, I did look this up. There IS a potential way that you could make alcohol from oranges and animal crackers. It's a little far fetched and unlikely but in theory, very possible to do. (You can pretty much make alcohol with a gallon of apple juice, some sugar, a slice of breadand a coffee filter.) }

“Justice, it’s done.”

Fate, a young man in his early twenties, with flowing navy hair and pale grey skin swooped down to gracefully land atop of the jagged rock that his brother was perched upon. He curled his black feathered wings back beneath his dark cloak and faced the other, arms folding behind his back in a military formality. 

“You finally got Time and Creativity here?” 

“It was a difficult task, there were some….complications.”

The older man finally turned to face the younger, narrowing his eyes as he stood from his perched position with exquisite posture, standing about a head taller than Fate. 

“Complications?”

Fate recoiled slightly though quickly regained his military composure. He cleared his throat before speaking, wings visibly twitching beneath his cloak.

“Humans, three of them.”

“Humans? Here?”

“It was just a mistake-“

“You know what the Voices do to those who make mistakes.”

Fate threw open his wings and shot off of the rock, flapping a few yards back from the other. He dragged his gloved hand back through his lush locks and tightened his pristine cloak.

“I’ll fix it.”

“You better.”

Justice crossed his arms, resuming his perch on the high jagged rock, narrowed eyes drifting down to the treetops below, watching carefully as a huge black tail weaved in and out of the treetops as something giant moves along underneath.

“Watch over them until sunrise, perhaps Mercy will be of help to you if they survive until then.” 

Fate closed his eyes for a moment, before offering a flustered nod and gliding back down towards the treetops.

Justice did not grace him with a look, continuing to keep his eyes on the trees.

“….Complications….Idiot.”

 

-

 

It was a relief to be back in the cool building that Harry decided to refer to as the hospital, despite it not really having a wide variety of any kind of real medical equipment. Even in Love’s treehouse the air was unbearably hot and only further irritated Harry’s skin. He was amazed that the strange turquoise man had been able to drink hot tea in this weather. Perhaps it was something you got used to, or perhaps wherever they came from had a much warmer climate anyway.

Still, he couldn’t quite shake the discomfort of being surrounded by these….he wasn’t sure he could go as far as to call them people. After what felt like an eternity of living with Tony and Paige, none of the colourful humanoid monsters they’d met felt safe to be around. They all had such a superior look, even the kindest ones, as if they knew their lives were so much further above you and your life didn’t matter as much as theirs.

Honestly, knowing that they were just as vulnerable as humans here gave Harry a strange wave of confidence. Though he still couldn’t bring himself to trust or believe anything they did or said, he kept himself on guard, ready to grab Manny and Robin and make a break for it at even the slightest indication something wasn’t right.

A lifetime of torment and abuse made you edgy. It wasn’t always a bad thing.

“If you so much as speak, I’ll kick you out so fast you won’t even know what happened. Understand me?”

Nature gave Love such a look of malice that it sent icy shivers running down Harry’s spine, though the Concept of Love didn’t seem at all phased. His cocky smirk cemented to his lips, not even wavering at her words.

It widened slightly as he met eyes with her, raising his eyebrows suggestively, then running his finger and thumb across his lips to indicate zipping it shut.

The woman rolled her eyes and scowled as she scooted out of the way of the door way to the room Healing was working in. “Every day I pray to the Voices that you’ll get eaten by Leviathans on one of your walks, Love.” She grunted under her breath.

The Love bug only strolled past her cheerfully. Harry and Robin followed closely.

Manny lingered back slightly and followed in last, Harry noticed the boy briefly glance up Nature and nod her small ‘Thank you’ before catching up with the two of them. She seemed to light up slightly in moderate approval and pulled down the thick leafy door for some privacy from the other patients in the building.

Tony was still curled up on a stretcher, he looked a lot paler than before but his breathing was steady now and he had a tight bandage around his bloodied middle. Harry wasn’t sure if the monster was unconscious or just lying very still, he kept a good distance regardless. He’d seen that man impale Paige with half his brain missing and his spine sticking out, he didn’t doubt that even in his disadvantaged position right now he couldn’t still cause them some serious damage if they got on his bad side.

Healing was sat on a second stretcher next to Paige, who was staring at her bloodied hands with empty shark eyes while the taller woman gently wrapped a brown cloth bandage around her middle.

“She did excellently. Time will live to see another day I expect.” Healing hummed quietly as she delicately tied the bandage into a perfect bow and stood to wash her hands in a wooden bowl of water perched on the counter. 

“Fuck off.”

“Don’t you speak to her like that.” Nature snapped.

The Concept of Creativity only scowled at her before her eyes returned once again emptily to her bloody hands, she didn’t continue arguing and that in itself was eerie.

Healing didn’t seem to react to the snapping at all and instead dried her hands on a cloth and approached the trio. She offered them a smile that Harry couldn’t find fault with, she didn’t have that same violent look in her eyes as the others seemed to.

“Now you three. Have any of you been injured?” She requested politely.

Robin glanced at Harry and the man blinked back at him before clearing his throat. “…Robin uh…got stabbed in his shoulder.”

“Oh my.”

“It’s fine, honestly I go through things six thousand times worse every fucking day.” The green haired man grumbled under his breath with a slight eye roll. Harry punched his good arm gently to remind him not to swear.

“I will look over the wound and see if there’s anything I can do. Please take a seat next to Creativity on the stretcher.” Healing cooed softly.

“Uh, no thanks. I’d rather stay with one hole in my torso than end up looking like swiss cheese.” 

They all glanced at Creativity who gave them a violent stink eye and bore her teeth a little in threat. Nature took a hefty step forwards and locked eyes with her for a moment and the inky woman eventually snapped her eyes to fix a glare on the wall opposite instead.

Robin still refused to sit anywhere near her, Healing decided to just bandage him standing up instead. At least his wound didn’t need stitches, which would have been considerably more difficult.

 

-

 

“Mercy?”

Fate landed gracefully on a ledge in the shadows of the scolding hot crypt. His eyes adjusted to the darkness enough to make out a few cloaked figures standing guard before the woman’s throne. He shuffled his feet slightly to ease the feeling of the hot, sharp rocks digging into them.

“What do you want, Fate?” the taller of the two figures asked sharply, he could see her piercing yet beautiful eyes glaring at him from beneath her cloaked hood. Just the look was enough to kill a man.

Before the man could answer, he was interrupted by Mercy herself, who stood from her seat and held up a hand gently.

“Space, it’s not needed. He comes seeking help.” She hummed, her voice smooth as warm caramel slowly melting from a hot spoon. The Concept pulled down her hood and in the dark Fate could make out her forgiving pink eyes and soft wave of peach hair.

“I know that you just want me to admit to making a mistake, I’ll have you know I’d rather die. Are you going to help me or not, Mercy?”

She paused for a moment, returning to her seat before turning her attention to her fingernails in feigned fascination. “Describe me your mistake and I’ll see what I can do to fix it, if I deem it worthy of fixing.” She responded smugly.

Fate groaned and took a step forward onto a slightly less sharp ledge. His wings stretched out unconsciously in threat as he narrowed his eyes. Though what choice did he have right now but to comply?

“I finally found them. Time and Creativity. They are here and finally being punished for their sins.” He grunted.

Mercy visibly raised an eyebrow, after a moment of silence her lips curled into a smirk.

“Ah I see. They’re not the only ones you brought here are they?”

He grimaced, shoulders tensing. God he hated her, she was so…predictable.

“Humans. Three of them. If word gets to the council then I’ll be-” He trailed off. No, he couldn’t think that way. Not yet.

Mercy chuckled. 

“So fate brought humans here, and you want the island to take mercy on them?”

“Will you help me or not?” He grit out bitterly.

Mercy pressed the tips of her fingers together. “No.”

He flinched and she snorted through her nose in amusement.

“But I will help them. They don’t deserve to be here because of your mistake.” She hummed, watching as the tension sank from the now grouchy looking man’s shoulders. “Make sure they come here to the volcano. I’ll get them home. Just make sure that they aren’t followed.”

“Especially by my younger brother and that ink soaked hellion.” Space added viciously, offering the man a warning look.

Fate grit his teeth, not gracing them with a reply, though forcing a sigh through his nose. It was as close to a thank-you as Mercy was going to get from him. He opened his wings, and flew.

 

-

 

Night had fallen earlier than Harry had been expecting, though it was awfully hard to keep track of time when the only clock they had was Tony and he was out of action. The Concept of Time had awoken maybe an hour ago now, though he had gone through a similar panicked meltdown to Paige when he realised he had no idea how much time had passed since he’d passed out, and couldn’t seem to visualise the current time at all. Everyone had kept their distance and luckily, no limbs were lost.

Harry, Robin and Manny now sat outside with a vast amount of Concepts all crowding around a campfire, the only source of light in the area (other than the Concept of Fire himself, a tall and incredibly well built man with soft hair that illuminated in the darkness). There were many monsters that Harry didn’t recognise yet, most of them had that same sneering important look as if they felt they were above this place and everyone in it, the man had little to no desire to speak to any of them. He held Manny’s arm to keep track of the kid and tried to keep an eye on Robin in the bustle of things. Apparently everyone living in this makeshift village was out and about now, apart from the Concept of Night who was apparently seeing Healing inside since she had fallen. 

Robin had to be held back so he wouldn’t scream and attack someone in anger over the ridiculousness of everything being so literal.

Some of the monsters had dragged hefty logs over so they didn’t have to sit in the dirt, some perched on tree branches higher above and Harry briefly wondered how they’d gotten up there. Many of them spoke to one another in some kind of weird ancient language that neither Harry or Robin could make out at all. Some of them just sat in silence and stared up at the beautiful glowing fire that danced for them like a captive princess being forced to do their bidding.

The heat radiating from the smoky flames was uncomfortable but the light was well needed. It was obvious that no-one felt safe in the darkness, not with all those beasts roaming the forest. It deeply unnerved the red-head to think that there were bigger monsters out there that were scary to the smaller monsters that tormented them. The hot orange glow illuminated the trees in a creepy way that made them feel a hundred times taller than they really were, and the dark shadows seemed to dance around people and whisk in and out of the trees, mocking them like cackling wicked fay in the night air.

The overall feeling of doom settled over everyone like a blanket and Harry wanted nothing more than to wake up from this nightmare.

At least Paige and Tony seemed to be keeping their distance for the most part, not that they both didn’t constantly have one eye fixed on the trio to make sure they weren’t trying to escape. The two of them stayed by each other’s sides as they roamed around, picking arguments with others. Neither of them were in great shape right now, Paige seemed unbearably irritable and Tony still seemed to woozily slump against whatever surface presented itself when he became lightheaded from his injuries, whether it be a tree, a wall, or an indignant Concept. Harry couldn’t help but count his blessings that the clock man wasn’t singing anymore at the very least.

Without much warning, Love suddenly emerged from seemingly nowhere and sat himself down in between Harry and Robin, the red-headed man grabbed Manny protectively for a moment before realising the cloaked turquoise monster didn’t look like he meant any harm, at least not right now.

“Care for some juice? Can’t have our guests dying of dehydration now can we?” He asked cheerfully, offering Robin a wooden cup brimming with orange juice.

Robin narrowed his eyes at the cup and shook his head. “I’d rather shrivel up and die from the heat than drink orange juice, I’ve barely been here two days and I’m so fucking sick or oranges for every meal.” He snarked bitterly, making a small click at the back of his throat. “You got any booze here?”

The turquoise man squinted his eyes a little and tilted his head just slightly. Robin’s eyes widened slightly in realisation that the other clearly didn’t know what alcohol was.  
“Oh my god. Manny give me some of those wet animal crackers from your backpack.”

Harry pulled a face as he watched the confused younger boy dig through his pack for the sea-ruined snacks. “You’re gonna try to make alcohol from orange juice and animal crackers?”

“What? They have yeast in, it would be a waste not to use them for something. Besides, I’ve made more with less before. You just watch me.” The green haired man huffed in pride, plucking the little baggy from the younger boys hands and standing up before rushing off. 

Harry wondered if the sun had gotten to the man’s head. It’s true, Robin had always been pretty good at brewing his own alcohol when they couldn’t afford shop-brought and they needed to get drunk on a week that Tony and Paige were being particularly vicious. Though trying to make anything drinkable with such limited ingredients and time seemed pretty impossible. Still, whatever kept his friend occupied and distracted from the horror of their situation was fair game he supposed.

The Concept of Love gave Harry such a concerned expression and the red-head merely shook his head slowly in response.

“Can I ask a question?” Manny suddenly pipped up quietly, snapping Loves full attention in a heartbeat.

“Yes, your true love IS in fact waiting out there for you.”

The younger boy screwed up his face a little before shaking his head. “That wasn’t what I was gonna ask.” He mumbled. “I was just wondering…how comes Tony and Paige have normal names, but everyone else here has weird names?”

Harry gently put a hand on the child’s fluffy hair. “You shouldn’t call people’s names ‘weird’ Manny.” He murmured quietly under his breath, desperately hoping that this particular monster wasn’t as sensitive and violent as the two they’d lived with.(Paige had once dissected him and fed his organs to wild dogs for telling her she had something stuck in her teeth.)

Fortunately, the turquoise Concept just snorted softly and leaned back on his elbows, closing his eyes slightly instead of snapping. “Love isn’t my name, it’s my title.” He explained, raising his eyebrows slightly at the kid as if he should already know this. 

“A Concept is born knowing their title, but you don’t know your name until later on. Most people choose theirs in adulthood. Once you choose one, you keep it to yourself. Your name becomes a part of you, if someone unpleasant finds out your name, they can use it to summon you, to bind you.” He murmured gently.

Harry scratched at the side of his head a little, moving a red lock of hair from his eyes. The whole idea of Concepts was surreal enough without the weird demonic summoning thing.

“How comes Tony and Paige use their names then?”

The Concept rolled his eyes and glugged down his juice. “They are showing off, being stubborn. Trying to prove that they’re not afraid.”

“That sounds like them alright.”

“Time and Creativity are young and stupid. They’ll both grow to regret their decisions one day. That I’m sure of.”

Manny fiddled with the strap of his rucksack for a few moments before locking eyes with the Concept of Love once more. “What’s your name?”

Love looked slightly taken back as he cracked open an eye and sat up, glancing at the boy before breaking eye contact. After a moment of hesitation he smirked back over. “I only entrust that information with people I trust heavily. Show me that you’re trustworthy and I’ll tell you.”

Manny scowled and Harry almost laughed at the boy as he watched the little cogs in his head spin trying to figure out how to prove his trustworthiness. He would have reassured the kid if he hadn’t been interrupted as they were plunged into shadow by the two figures who sat down opposite them, scowling slightly.

“Nice to see you’re feeling better now Time. I think the entire village is glad that you’ve finally stopped your beautiful ballad of singing and vomiting.” Love chirped with a smug beam.

Harry visibly winced as he watched the clock man grab the sword at his hip, only to have the inky woman grab his wrist to stop him.

“He isn’t worth it, dear. Besides you’re not healing properly at the moment.” She muttered quietly under her breath as he lowered his hand with a threatening snarl in Love’s direction. Love just grinned back at them proudly.

“What’s the plan for escaping this hellish wonderland? I have things to be doing and don’t want to waste any more time in this uncivilised wasteland with all of you incompetent dejects.” Tony grunted at the man, moving his trembling hand itching to get at his sword to instead rub at his bloodied side. The strange feeling of his appendix being missing and not immediately growing back was making his insides itch.

Love muffled a chuckle and leaned back on his elbows once more. “You can call us incompetent if that makes you feel better Time, but it seems that YOU were the one who almost died of a snake bite. Of all the things that are out to kill you on this island, a small common snake that was minding its own business?”

Tony screwed up his face into a scowl and bore his pointed teeth at the man threateningly, though Love kept his eyes closed and the smirk plastered on his face anyway. He seemed pretty confident that neither Tony nor Paige would hurt him at the moment.

“There uh…..there is no way to escape. Or at least, that’s what everyone’s been saying. I figure they know since they’ve been here longer than us.” Harry murmured, in hopes it would at least prevent the clock from lashing out.

Paige grunted at him dismissively and both of them kept their eyes on Love instead of gracing him with their attention.

“You’ve tried flagging down boats?”

“Yup, never a single boat on the horizon. The whole area is field protected; nothing can get within a few hundred miles of this place to even find us.”

“What about building a raft?” Tony growled.

“Tried it. Several times. The last person who tried was Balance and he washed up two weeks later, flesh all blue and swollen twice its size with sea water. We buried him near to where you’re sitting.”

Harry noticed Tony jolt slightly and glance at the ground in mild disgust, Paige kept her eyes focused on Love.

“What about flying? Some of you have wings still right? They ruled out cutting those off a while ago.”

Love winced a little and shifted his own wings under his cloak. “You saw all those with the broken wings in Healing’s place right? Failed escapees.”

“There has to be SOME way out!” Tony snarled, moving faster than anyone could stop him to grab Love by the front of his cloak, tugging him a few inches from his face threateningly. 

The turquoise love-bug flinched a little and turned his face away, huffing through his nose snobbily. “You have vomit breath, Time.”

Tony shook him violently until Paige stepped in to tear between them. “Cut it out or I’ll stab you both in your tracheas.” She hissed. Reluctantly they both slumped back down in their opposite spots and glared at one another.

Harry pulled his head into his hands as the three of them squabbled. This was it. He was doomed to spend the rest of his life trapped on a monster infested island with a society of criminal childish demigods with violent tendencies and he’d only ever eat oranges for the rest of his life. He felt Manny put a gentle hand on his shoulder but it only made his heart sink further realising not only was he doomed but so were his friends. Robin would never finish the book he’d started reading that morning they caught the plane and Manny would never see his school friends again.

“Maybe we’ll like it here. We can live in a tree house and stuff.” The child suggested reassuringly, patting Harry’s back gently and offering him a smile.

The red-head opened his eyes lazily and turned to him to try to offer him a faked enthusiastic agreement, when his eye caught something not quite right behind the three Concepts who were now tangled on the floor punching each other. Over in the trees, far away from the crowd, was a figure. It was too dark for Harry to make out any distinguishable features but he noticed he was wearing a cloak and stood tall and proud like Tony did with a perfect composure. Something wasn’t right about this character, he wasn’t sure what, but just the way he stood perfectly still, watching them, far away from all the others and going completely unnoticed.

Harry blinked and he was gone. He had to shake his head in disorientation, was that a mirage? Was he hallucinating from heat stroke? The man just vanished out of thin air, it was as if he’d never been there at all.

“Are you okay Harry?” Many asked softly, glancing up at the man with concern in his young eyes.

Harry opened his mouth to respond before he was interrupted by a loud rumble.

The ground shook and the noise was deafening, like a roar of thunder only amplified ten thousand fold. Harry instinctively grabbed Manny, quickly noticing the panic of Concepts around them rushing for cover, barrelling into buildings or getting close to the ground, leaping from trees and covering their heads. The red-head carefully got on his own hands and knees, putting over hand on his head and using the other to cover the very confused and frightened blue haired child’s head. “Stay down Manny I think it’s an-“

It stopped.

Harry paused half expectantly for a moment before blinking open his scrunched up eyes. Everything looked mostly okay, people were starting to get backup and dust themselves off, acting indignant as if they hadn’t been on their knees in the mud praying to some mystical “Voices” for mercy two seconds ago. He sat up and gently took his hand away from Manny to allow the boy to sit up too.

“An earthquake?”

He glanced over at Paige and Tony who had somehow managed to get themselves tangled in some strange position with Love on the ground defensively. Tony had one strong arm over Paige to keep her close to the ground and the other hand smushing the turquoise man’s face into the dirt. It would have been a hysterical sight if Harry didn’t know that they were murderers that could slaughter each other and everyone here any second if they decided to. After a few moments they all indignantly untangled themselves and resumed to sitting and glaring at one another instead. 

Tony dug his fingers achingly into his un-healing wound and picked at the stitches and Paige smacked his hand away from it, while the Concept of Love got bored with them and turned his attention back to the three humans instead.

“Volcano.”

“VOLCANO?!”

“Yeah? That surprises you? It’s literally a death island.”

“Did it erupt?”

“No, not this time. I think Fate just makes it rumble sometimes so he can watch everyone shit their pants. Death by lava is not a way anyone wants to die. I was around to see Pompeii you know? Not a pretty sight.”

Harry shivered. The realisation that there were still monsters fucking with them even now was not something he needed on his mind on top of everything else.  
“Is everyone alright?” Healing called out in her gentle, quiet voice as she toddled over to them, holding bandages in one gloved hand just in case. Nature followed her closely, eyes immediately narrowing when they settled on Time, Creativity and Love.

“Oh Healing, I’m sorry to say that Time and Creativity were horribly disfigured in the chaos. You’ll have to- Oh wait it’s fine. They’ve both always looked like that. My bad.”

Tony punched Love in the face so hard that the man collapsed back on the ground with a groan, fighting off unconsciousness. The clock had to shake the soreness out of his hand afterwards and Nature immediately grabbed him by the hair and yanked him to stand up. Then Paige grabbed Nature’s arm threateningly and all three of them ended up in an aggressive staring contest to see who would crack and smash the other’s head in first.

“Oh let him go, Nature. We’ve all wanted to punch Love in the face at least a little bit.” Healing sighed as she sank down next to Love to dab at his bleeding nose with a brown cloth bandage.

“Oh wow, of all the people I expected to hear that from, Healing.” The turquoise man huffed, frowning a little in a sulk.

Nature snarled a little but hesitantly let go of Time’s hair, letting him drop into a heap on the ground. Tony groaned as he landed on his injured side and Paige snorted so hard that she couldn’t concentrate on holding Natures arm anyway and let go in disinterest.

“I’ve been thinking.” Nature huffed out after a moment, scooting back to lean her behind against an upturned log casually, keeping her harsh, cold eyes fixed on the two trouble makers for the moment.

“That’s dangerous.” Love snorted, then making a shrill pained noise as Healing slapped a band aid on his sore face just a little too hard.

Nature scowled at him for a moment but continued regardless, suddenly turning her attention to Harry and Manny.

“Mercy is living in the crypt beneath the volcano, right? She manages the guard control. If these three can make it to her, surely she’ll send them back home immediately. That bubble-gum bitch wouldn’t let ‘innocent’ people rot here.” She murmured.

Harry felt Manny shoot up and saw the boys eyes widen, he felt a pang of second hand excitement bubble in his chest though he was wary, ready to let it die any second from some kind of disappointment that was bound to follow.

“Tch.” Love spat, rolling his eyes as he sat up and clicked his dislocated jaw back into place, wincing a little. “Like three humans could survive in the forest, all the way to the crypt. Even a Concept can’t survive out there alone.”

“What about Dreams? He goes out all the time.” Healing remarked softly, standing back up and delicately dusting off her dainty gloved hands.

Love pulled a face, Harry noticed that Nature sort of grimaced too. 

“Dreams doesn’t count. He has the dream sword. That’s cheating.” The love-bug huffed, rolling his eyes dramatically before slinking back over to sit next to Harry, who scooted back just a tiny bit. Not that Love either noticed or cared.

“She has a point. They could take Dreams with them. They’d stand a better chance of surviving this if they went with him.” Nature sighed almost in defeat. “That is if they don’t kill him before they even get there.”

“Or get horribly lost.” Love snorted, earning him a small bonk on the head from Healing’s little gloved fist.

“Be nice, he is doing his best. It’s not his fault he gets confused.”

“They could bring Night to lead the way and keep them on track, and Fire to light the path.” Nature suggested, genuinely starting to look intrigued by this idea.

“I think you’re missing the biggest problem here. None of our little students are leaving this hell-hole without us.” Paige suddenly butt in, sharp teeth bared in a threatening grin as she tilted her paper white face towards Manny. Ugh, that look sent chills right through Harry’s heart and he grabbed the younger boy protectively.

Even Love seemed to shiver just slightly at her threat, though he brushed it off quickly and crossed his arms. “I suppose she has a point, why would anyone help them? There’s no pay off. No one is going to voluntarily risk their life to help three people they’ve just met when at the end of the day them themselves will still end up stuck here left behind to rot.”

There was a silence that marked the end of the discussion and Harry felt the hope drain out of his heart once more. He honestly felt a little stupid for letting it creep in in the first place. When had anything ever gone their way?

He heard the familiar footsteps of his green-haired friend approach and watched as he paused nervously outside of the circle of Concepts clutching Healing’s hand washing bowl. Which now looked like it was full of an unappealing yellow-ish brown liquid. Their heads snapped towards him as he stopped and the poor man looked like he might pass out. “Uhhh….am I….interrupting…?”

“Yeah, just a little bit there kid.” Love murmured towards him, raising an eyebrow expectantly. “Did you succeed in making your boos?”

Harry couldn’t muffle the obvious snort of laughter that burst from his throat and Love shot him a glare.

“Yeah, it will take about ten days until its matured enough to drink. But I figure we’re stuck here for an eternity anyway.” Robin muttered, glancing down proudly at his bowl.

“Hand it over.” Tony grunted, narrowing his eyes at the green-haired man and holding out his gloved hands. To which Robin promptly squeaked and handed him the bowl, careful not to spill even a drop lest he get impaled for ruining the man’s somehow pristine white gloves.

The clockwork man tugged off one glove with his teeth and proceeded to dunk one finger into the liquid. It slowly changed in hue to a slightly darker brown and he handed it back to Robin just as Paige grabbed his ear and twisted it violently enough to get a pained grunt out of him.

“Don’t waste your powers like that you ticking twat.” She hissed, “We talked about this, we have to save what we have left. You already don’t know what the time is.”

He scrunched up his nose and glared back at her. “We’re going to die here anyway, what does it matter. We might as well use what we have while we still have it.” He grunted, “I’m in rather tremendous pain currently and not healing at all, if you don’t mind I’d quite like to get drunk”. Tony licked the residual orange alcohol from his finger and gagged slightly, squinting his eyes in slight pain. “…It’s vile. But it’s defiantly alcohol.”

Harry couldn’t miss the look on Robin’s face, the man almost looked overcome with pride despite everything. He wished he could scrape optimism from the little things in the same way to escape the soul crushing weight of doom pressing down on his back.

“…I suppose I’ll get some cups for your… boos?” Healing declared calmly, standing then wandering back into her little hut to fetch something to dish the liquid out with. Frankly after what seemed like an eternity of nothing but oranges and orange juice, Harry supposed they would probably take anything that varied in taste even if it was likely to be slightly toxic.

Nature watched the taller woman disappear inside the building before her eyes drifted back to the volcano. “…What if we…..made a plan. Took the humans to Mercy, then attacked and hijacked the ride out. Maybe we could escape too?” She murmured, crossing her arms casually as her eyes moved to Tony and Paige. “You two are good fighters I’ll give you that, and Time still seems to be in moderate control of his powers for the moment. I could distract Mercy and her minions. Time could suspend time on the area and we could get as many people onto that transport vessel as possible before they noticed.”

Harry watched wide eyed as Love blinked rapid fire and Paige’s jaw dropped. Tony narrowed his eyes a little at the woman, playing with the hilt of his sword. “That could work, the attempt would be a more efficient use of time than simply letting Fate take his course and rotting our living corpses on this island for the rest of existence at the very least. Though I’m curious as to what this gains you Nature, your plan seems to involve a situation you’d certainly not survive from. Once Mercy figures out your plan she’ll have your heart on her trophy shelf in an instant.”

Nature let out a steady breath through her nose and let her eyes drift back to the trees to avoid contact with the clock monster. For the first time, Harry noticed, her expression didn’t look fierce, just tired. 

“Just get Healing somewhere safe. She won’t last much longer here; I see it in her eyes whenever she works. She’s loosing herself and I don’t know how to stop it. She needs to get away from this murder hole. I’ll do what I need to do to protect her.”

Harry’s eye’s darted to the other three Concepts as Love pressed his hands to his cheeks with an “Awww” and both Tony and Paige gagged dramatically and screwed up their faces, groaning out “Ewww” in unison.

“We can band together our group at sunrise when everyone retires to their cabins. Dreams can be our defence, the dream sword is the only way we will survive the trek. Night and Fire are our best chance at navigating, especially come nightfall when we can’t see the volcano through the trees. Time and Creativity, you can be in charge of babysitting the humans since you both know them the best. Me and Healing will take the day shifts navigating. It should take us a few days to get there at best.”

“What about me?” Love asked with an offended tone, clearing his throat a little to make himself heard and crossing his arms.

“You can stay here”

“Absolutely not.”

Nature groaned a little. “Fine, then you can come and be extra defence, and you can keep your mouth zipped the whole trip or you’ll be re-assigned as official Leviathan bait.”

Healing returned with a stack of cups and handed them to Robin, who awkwardly took them in one hand while balancing his bowl skilfully in the other. “So until sundown, we drink. To escaping this hell-hole.” The green haired man declared proudly, clearly bathing in confidence for the moment.

Harry thought his excitement was deluded, though he couldn’t help but crack a grin as he was handed a cup. Perhaps there was hope yet, even if it was a little far-fetched. Besides, there was nothing wrong with a little deluded optimism when things were terrible.

“To fighting the system.” Love declared proudly, holding his full cup in the air.

Nature hesitantly sniffed her cup in curiosity before lifting it too. “To new beginnings”

“To getting away from all of you unbearable, time wasting hellions as soon as possible.”

“To being forever criminals.”

“To doing what’s right.”

Harry quietly closed his eyes and sipped on the bitter liquid, leaning back in his elbows gently. “To survival.” He murmured under his breath, lips curling into a tiny grin as he heard Manny start cackling wildly as six people all did spit takes and started gagging and cursing in unison.

 

-

 

“Back so soon Fate? Have they died already?”

Fate gracefully swooped forwards to land on the stone ledge before Mercy, Space and Violence. Mercy stood from her throne to greet him, though her smug grin fell slightly when she saw the confidence in his eyes.

Fate smirked as he crossed his arms and steeled his shoulders in pride. “Oh no, they’re on their way.”

“And they’re coming alone?”

“Oh dear me no. They’re bringing a whole group.”

Mercy scowled, pulling down her hood to look at him with threat. “That wasn’t in the agre-“

“Those criminals have been cosy in their little safe village for too long Mercy, I think it’s about time we lured them out for a while, don’t you? After all, the guards are getting terribly bored.” Fate suggested, malicious grin spreading a little wider.

“Don’t worry, I promise you they’ll arrive here alone, just like we agreed.”

Mercy scowled slightly and sat back down in her seat, not gracing him with a response.

 

“Just leave it to Fate.”


	6. Discidium

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An adventure begins when a brave team of criminals make a treck through the depths of hell to rescue three innocents (and maybe themselves in the process).  
> But when Fate is against you, a merciful act can turn into a bad dream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Boy howdy did this chapter take a while. Sorry for the long delay, life is happening right now and things got busy.  
> Another big thank-you to everyone on tumblr for all the support! Especially Cosmo-the-artist and Fettpop who have created some awesome fanart for the story! Heck I love you guys!  
> I know this chapter is a little scattered, I think I struggled with this one more than all of the others put together so bare with me. Things will make sense in due time, and I promise that the next chapter will consist a lot more of Padlock, the Butterfuck cultist, and the Trafficlight trio (because lets face it, that's what most people are here for...), but this chapter needed to cover quite a lot.
> 
> Once again!!! Comments are REEAALLLY appreciated! Like, I havn't had a comment since chapter two. just sayin' like....I'd write a lot faster and a lot better if you guys told me what you liked and didn't like, gave me some feedback or at least some positive vibes.
> 
> Anyway, Enjoy!
> 
> Discidium - To be seperated from a loved one.

Discidium

 

\--

 

It was hunched over in a clearing, devouring the still steaming bloodied corpse of a Leviathan that hadn’t quite made it back to the river in time. 

Fate landed soundlessly on a branch nearby to observe, wings folding against his cloak as he scowled in its direction.

It grunted as it swallowed a sludge coated chunk of oily flesh and snorted wetly through its nose, claws grazing the soft dirt beneath its insect like toes as it turned to look in his direction. Hundreds of red slit eyes narrowed and sharp teeth became visible through its torn flesh. It was letting him know it was aware of his presence.

“My my, aren’t you a scrappy one.”

He grinned when it snarled in return, baring several sets of razor sharp teeth and clicking its head at an unholy 180° angle.

“No need for that now, I’m here to make you an offer.”

It lowered its guard and his smirk curled up wider.

“One you simply can’t refuse.”

 

\--

 

Harry wished he’d stopped Robin from making that awful concoction last night. From the variety of nauseated and defeated looking faces behind them, he could tell that everyone else wished the same thing.

At least Manny was a functioning member of the group, the kid had even gotten a few hours of sleep despite the awful noise levels. He was lingering near the front of the group talking to that tall man with the fluffy hair, what was his name again? Sleep? No….Dreams?

Seriously, what was up with these people’s names?

Harry scraped his sweaty hand back through his greasy hair and it felt stiff and disgusting from the salt water in the air. Ugh. His other hand adjusted the shorter green haired man on his back, who was still unconscious and drooling into his shoulder a bit. Robin always drank way too much, Harry supposed at least the guy was getting some sleep at last.

The ones that seemed to be called Fire and Night led the group, hacking through the undergrowth to clear a path, everyone else stumbled along at the back trying to block out any noise than could assault their ears. Getting drunk on Robin’s moderately toxic abomination last night had not been the smartest idea, even if they did all need something to take the edge off in this hellish wonderland.

“Do hurry up, Love. We are already two hours behind schedule because of your little vomiting problem this morning.” Tony grunted.

Harry noticed the clock monster’s groggy eyes narrow a little more as the shorter man tripped on his own cape a little and held his throbbing head in one hand. Shifting a little faster to catch up. The poor lovebug had handled his alcohol a little worse than everyone else.

“It’s not MY fault that YOUR students poisoned us.”

“Well it’s not OUR fault that you’re a ridiculous lightweight.” 

That was Paige, Harry could tell without even looking around and he sighed through his nose. Paige and Tony had never been pleasant people but when they were hungover they were unbearable.

“No one even wants you here Love, just go back to the camp and cry some more.”

“I was NOT crying. Concepts don't CRY.”

Nature let out an angry hiss as she rubbed at her eyes to ease the headache building behind them. “If you all don’t shut up I’m killing everyone here and then myself.”

“I’d like to see you TRY!”

Okay he’d had enough. Harry hurried to the front to walk alongside the newest three members of the group and Manny instead, he didn’t want to be anywhere near the gaggle of hungover violent demigods when they finally snapped and kicked off.

“-so that’s why in 1846 the platypus was named the most likely animal to kill the Queen of England.” The cloaked man with the soft waves of aquarium blue hair declared proudly, hand enthusiastically waving around as he spoke. There was a permanent sleepy smile on the Dreams’ face and yet Harry felt that something about him looked awfully exhausted.

Manny looked so confused as he nodded along cautiously. He had never been the smartest kid in his classes but even he seemed to know that there was something not quite right with that fact.

“I don’t think Queen Victoria was killed by a platypus…they haven’t mentioned that in school.”

“That’s because it’s a government conspiracy, though actually a platypus never did kill her instead one romanced her into falling deeply in love and then locked her in a basement and took her place as the new ruler of the universe.”

The group came to a rather sudden halt as the humongous Concept leading suddenly stopped tearing up thistles and vines (Harry couldn’t help but feel disturbed at how he was doing it with his bare hands, though he supposed Paige and Tony never seemed too bothered by small pains like thorns and nettles either as far as he’d noticed). The man was ridiculously tall, at least a few feet taller than Harry and that was saying something because he was at least 6”1. His chest was the size of a boat and he had the brightest orange hair any of the trio had ever seen, it almost hurt to look directly at it.

“Don’t listen to Dreams kid, he’s not all there.” Fire snorted, dropping the handful of sharp foliage he had and turning around to stretch one arm behind his shoulder. He grunted and it clicked, then he moved to stretch the other arm.

“Don’t be rude, Fire. It’s his job to be weird anyway. At least he makes things more cheerful” The Concept of Night huffed stiffly, chopping one more branch with her slender sword before turning to narrow her eyes at him.

“No no, he’s right. I’m not all here. Actually, I am here and here and here and over there and up there and under there.” Dreams sang back cheerfully, pointing on all sorts of directions. Harry could have sworn the grin he gave Fire was a smug one.

“Can you at least either keep your voice down so you don’t attract monsters or help us with clearing the thickets, we need to make it to the river by the time the sun hits its peak in the sky or we will fry to death.” Fire grunted, “Well, you guys will fry to death. I’ll be in my element.”

Dreams playfully ruffled Manny’s hair, which made the boy squeak slightly and shuffle back. “If I’m quiet then how will my darling find me? I need to find her if we are going home, I can’t just leave without her.”

Harry noticed the two at the front grimace slightly in unison before Night murmured a soft “We need to keep moving” and they returned to leading the way.

“Who’s your darling?” Manny asked politely, tugging at the straps of his backpack a little and keeping his innocent eyes plastered on the ground. Harry put a protective hand on the boys shoulder to keep him at a distance from the still-not-to-be-trusted Concepts.

The man seemed to light up like a Christmas decoration and pressed his hands to his unshaven cheeks. “She is so wonderful, she-!” Dreams cut off suddenly as he drew his golden broadsword and effortlessly impaled a creature that suddenly lunged out of the darkness towards Night. The Leviathan shrieked as it’s entire body seemed to buzz and flicker like a virus-ridden CGI, it was kind of terrifying. When the man tugged back his sword the creature slumped in a slimy heap and he continued to walk around it and follow on as if nothing had happened. 

Harry couldn’t help but fix his eyes on the man’s weapon, it was both mesmerising and painful to look at. Its handle was engraved with such intricate illustrations of clouds, but what was more interesting was the blade itself which; while not being quite as delicate and ornamental as Time or Love’s swords, seemed to glitch and flicker like a computer bug in the real world. His focus was only snapped back to reality when Dreams once again spoke.

“What was I saying…?”

Manny looked frozen with fear but after a brief moment he forced his shaking legs to keep moving forwards too. “Y-your darling?”

“OH! She’s-“

“She’s dead.” Came Fire’s monotone response from the front, he didn’t even grace the man with looking back.

Harry almost felt a little sick as he watched the overly cheerful man’s eyes glaze over and his flailing arm shuddered a little and slowly sank back to his side to rest the sword at his hip. The caped man went silent for the first since they’d met and remained that way for several awkward minutes, before very suddenly lighting up again out of nowhere.  
“Say, have I told you about the time everyone in the universe turned into balloons and started screaming in unison so loudly that all of time and space collapsed and the very matter of being became a small cardboard box?” He questioned brightly, slotting his sword back in its hilt and twirling excitedly in his cape. 

“Hey did you hear that?”

The panicked tone of Healing’s voice is what caught Harry’s attention from the rest of the angry babbling behind him, his head twisted slightly and he paused when he noticed everyone had stopped moving. They looked on edge, Nature had her dagger on hand and Love’s sword was drawn and ready. After a moment he heard the footsteps in front of him stop too.

Panic raced through Harry’s mind and he grabbed Manny’s shoulder with his free hand. Robin grunted slightly and cracked his groggy eyes open as he was jogged awake and the red-head wasted no time in lowering the now conscious man to his feet.

“Get down!” Fire called out sharply just seconds before the whole world started to rumble again.

Harry grabbed Manny’s shoulders and pushed him to the ground to cover the younger boy. He watched his surroundings in terror as the gargantuan trees rocked dangerously and the ground started to crackle. Robin let out a horrified cry and darted back and forth like a headless chicken before throwing himself onto his belly and clinging to some shrubs for support.

One of the trees suddenly made a sickening creak as it slowly fell and crashed into several other trees. There was a scream and a panicked cry for help which was almost drowned out by the hideous rumbling that almost made Harry’s ears feel like bleeding.

Screaming.

A roar.

Darkness.

 

\--

 

The realm of Nubibus wasn’t an easy one to get to, it had taken Fate over an hour of flying and his wings ached with every passing minute. At least Concepts were smart enough to build stairs between the various levels of the Citadel, Angels just liked to show off. Those harp playing, ass-kissing, rule following suck-ups.

He didn’t expect to be received with greetings and smiles of any kind either. The man held his sword tightly as he finally found a solid ground to perch on, folding his wings up to rest. He’d need them again soon.

“Concepts don’t usually stray to these areas you know. What’s the matter, did you get lost, Fate?”

Fate whipped his head around just in time to see two figures perch down either side of him.

Fuck.

“Actually, I am here on business.”

One of them made a snorting noise with his nose and the other grinned a toothy smile, moving a hand down to the blade at their hip obviously. “And what ‘business’ does a Concept have with Angels?”

“None of YOUR business that’s for sure.”

He almost smirked at his own smug remark but was immediately met with a powerful fist to his cheek, knocking him back off the ledge. It took the man falling several feet before he managed to catch himself and open his wings once more. He returned to the hysterical laughing Angels with a disapproving frown.

“Scram kid. Concepts aren’t welcome here. This is your one chance to run away with your tail between your legs before we beat you to ashes and dump you back in your baby cage of a realm.”

“Oh, I’d sure you’d just love to fight me. Who’s the immortal one here, Tabbris? You think the Voices would be happy to know that you and Gabe tried to beat a Concept bloody? “

That seemed to set them back just a little, the grins on their faces shrinking just a bit. Fate knew they wouldn’t be intimidated enough though. Concepts were immortal, sure, but Angels were much stronger. It was unlikely the great Voices would intervein with such a petty dispute either.

“What if I told you there was a way to kill Concepts permanently?”

“Then I’d call you a liar. We’ve been around long enough to know that there’s no way to get rid of you brats. You’re like cockroaches.”

Fate gripped his sword tighter and opened his wings in case he needed to make a quick getaway. His cheek pulsated slightly from the pain of the blow and he raised his free hand to touch the swollen wound.

“Let me tell you a story.” He hummed smugly, pulling his hand away from his cheek and using it to smooth back his messy hair, lips curling into a soft grin. “A story about an island.”

 

\--

 

“Harry? Harry please wake up. Please, I’m scared.”

Harry groaned as the buzz in his head and the ringing in his ears died down. It took a good few minutes before his eyes could open without it making him want to claw his own brain out.

Manny was stood over him, clutching his backpack to his chest as if it were a stuffed animal and shivering slightly. He looked somewhat relieved as Harry regained consciousness.

“Are you okay Manny?”

“Robin got separated.”

That made the redhead sit up rather suddenly, before scrambling to his feet.

Sure enough, there was a huge unholy crack that looked like it stretched down to the depths of hell in the solid dirt floor. It was at least a few feet wide and seemed to go on as far as one could see through the thickets, miles and miles. They’d been separated, Robin was on the other side of the ravine along with Paige, Fire, Night and Love. 

“HARRY!” The green haired man waved over in terror.

“Robin! Are you okay?!”

“I think so! Are you?”

“Yeah, but-“ He was cut off when Tony shoved him to the side slightly in dismissal.

“PAIGE!”

“You don’t need to SHOUT we are a few feet away you ticking twit!”

“Excuse me but if anyone is the twit then it’s you for ending up on the other side of a fucking ravine!”

Nature suddenly snarled a violent “SHUT IT” which fortunately succeeded in silencing the two cranky monsters. 

“Listen, we don’t have time to stand around while one group tries to find a way around. We need to get to the river soon. You guys follow Dreams, me and Night will lead the others. We will meet up at the river in two hours.” Fire called across, hands on his hips and a not-to-be-messed-with expression on his face.

“You want us to follow Dreams? I don’t think that’s a good idea. You know that he’s sort of……he’s a bit…..” Healing stammered in a fluster, tugging at the hem of her gloves as her eyes darted between the fluffy haired man and the group across the gap.

“He’s broken! We are not following a confused man-child to our deaths!” Nature snapped harshly, earning her a whap on the arm from her wife.

“Don’t be nasty to Dreams! He’s doing his best! Besides, he probably knows the forest better than the lot of us so suck it up Nature!” Night shouted over almost offendedly.

“I suppose I can be a little hard to follow sometimes, but I’m certain I know where the river is.” Dreams chirped back cheerfully, the working wing on his back twitching slightly in excitement as he turned swiftly on his feet and started in a direction.

“Maybe we should at least give him a chance Nature, after all he has the dream sword so at least we’ll be safe from the Leviathans.”

Nature groaned in frustration and rolled her eyes, but seemed to relent and grabbed Healings arm to drag her after the man. “He’s probably already forgotten where we’re going, useless man.”

Manny turned to follow too but Harry held his shoulder to keep him back with one arm as he watched Tony remain close to the edge of the crack hesitantly.

“You can just jump over. I’ve seen you jump further distances with those stupid noodle legs of yours.” Paige snapped at him, her inky hands stubbornly moving to her hips. 

He snarled and wrinkled his nose in irritation. “It’s too wide. I’ll fall.”

“No, you won’t! Just try. I’m not ditching you and hiking off to my death with these morons.”

“Aww what’s the matter darling? Don’t think you can protect yourself in the big bad forest?”

His smug look was unbearable, It was her turn to screw up her face and give him a crude hand gesture in return. “Just get over here you egocentric asshole.”

Harry watched in slight interest as the clock man stepped back several steps and ran forwards to get a running start, only to stumble and skid to a skittish stop just before the edge, then taking a large step back. The redhead could have sworn he almost looked sheepish.

“It’s too far.” He growled, clearing his throat slightly before regaining his posture.

The woman cackled. “What’s wrong? Are you scaaaaared?”

“I could die permanently this time. It’s not fear, it’s logic.” 

“You can MAKE this jump Tony! It’s a few feet for fuck sake!”

He narrowed his eyes at her and snarled, before turning on his heal and stomping after the others without another word.

Harry didn’t dare say anything, he quietly took Manny’s hand and squeezed it to indicate to stay silent, then followed the furious clock monster a few feet behind.

“Tony! TONY! GET BACK HERE!”

Manny covered his ears and the two of them sped up their pace until they reached Nature and Healing again. After a few minutes, Paige’s voice was barely audible in the distance, loud and obnoxious as it was.

“TONY!”

If Harry didn’t know better, he’d think she sounded afraid.

 

\--

 

“What happened to you? You look like you were dragged through a hedge backwards.”

Justice had only briefly glanced up at the younger man from his perch on a tree branch, after a moment he resumed focus on his book instead. “Did you ever sort out the human situation?”

Fate growled slightly under his breath as he landed a few feet away on a slightly higher branch of a tree opposite. He spat blood to one side and rubbed three fingers groggily into his blackened eye. 

“I’m working on it.”

“So they’re still here?”

“I recruited some help, it seems they’ve formed attachments to some of the inmates. I need to separate them before I-“

“I knew you’d mess this up.”

Fate paused, shuffling back slightly on the branch with a wounded look. “I-“

Justice stood from his perch and carelessly tucked his book into his pocket, turning to face the younger with a disappointed glare. “You’re a loose end, an unruly child. You don’t do anything properly and expect everyone else to pick up your messes. I’m beginning to tire of babysitting you, Fate.”

The younger grit his teeth and pulled his cloak around himself a little tighter, before spreading his wings once more. “I can fix this. I AM fixing this, no thanks to you!” He snapped as he hopped off the branch and disappeared back into the trees.

Justice turned his focus towards the thick timberland surrounding him and let out a small sigh, shaking his head. “You stink of Angels, Fate. I’ll have no part in this. You should not be messing with things beyond your understanding.” He called into the darkness.

 

\--

 

Had it always been this foggy? 

Harry could swear that not too long ago he’d been able to see the pretty moving patterns of sunlight shining on the forest floor through the thick trees like a mesmerising white kaleidoscope in the dirt. Now all he could see was heavy mist up to his knees. Things were feeling a little cooler too but he wasn’t complaining much about that, this place was way too hot.

“-Also did you know that before frogs were invented, there used to be very tiny math teachers living on lilly pads and sometimes they would have eight mile long tongues that could kill a man on impact.”

At least Dreams’ unintelligible ramblings were lightening the mood and distracting from the creepy vibe the darkness of the forest was giving out.

“Will you SHUT UP! I have a migraine. Do you ever stop talking? Focus on where we’re going!”

Apparently not everyone thought so.

“Nature don’t be rude.” Healing sighed exasperatedly. She was clinging slightly to the shorter woman’s arm, Harry supposed it was because she didn’t have a weapon of her own to defend herself if something did attack.

Come to think of it, he didn’t have much either. Holding Manny’s hand a little tighter, he jogged to catch up a little closer to Dreams. Despite the man’s slow nature and sleepy appearance, he seemed very quick to react with his sword whenever something was lurking close by.

“I know where we’re going! Or at least, I’m 40% sure I know where we’re going. Anyway, did I ever tell you about the time-“

“DREAMS I WILL CUT YOUR TONGUE OUT.”

Harry pinched the bridge of his nose. At least Tony had been quiet since they started out, he was following them a few yards back with a sulky look on his face. His best guess was that the clock monster was pining for the rainbow witch. As much as they argued Harry knew they couldn’t stand being away from each other. 

They constantly acted like they didn’t want the other around, but he remembered the time Tony had been buried alive and took a solid week to dig himself back out and the entire time Paige spent wearing his jacket and attacking anyone that even looked at her funny over it. Then there was the time that Paige had been frozen solid and was taking days and days to thaw out, Tony spent the entire time glugging down unholy amounts of coffee and pacing the house until he’d almost worn paths into the varnished floorboards.

There was something strangely amusing thinking about bloodthirsty monsters having separation anxiety.

“The fog is getting really thick. I can barely see anything. Is this normal, Dreams?” Healing broke the silence with her gentle voice, squinting her pretty eyes to try to make out shapes through the heavy mist starting to creep higher with every passing minute.

“Oh yes, perfectly normal! If the weather isn't neon green or full of rubber ducks then it’s probably as normal as you can get.” The man chuckled calmly, continuing to stride quickly through the thickets without a care in the world.

“Can you at least slow down? I can’t see where I’m putting my feet and you’re moving rather fast. We’re going to loose you soon.”

The man chuckled and shook his head as he continued to lead, starting to vanish a little into the greyish mist. “People are constantly saying they lost me a long time ago.”

“Dreams?”

There was a crackle behind them like scuttling feet crunching through the undergrowth, and something that sounded like a childish giggle. It was strangely eerie in the darkness.

Fuck, Harry could barely see anyone other than Manny at his side. He tried to hurry along but he was starting to loose his sense of direction. Where had Dreams gone? Where was Nature and Healing.

“Uh, guys? Marco-?”

“Polo!” Manny peeped quietly from next to him. He didn’t hear any other responses, but it could have been because the Concepts just didn’t understand the game. 

He came to a stop, holding the younger boy’s shoulders slightly nervously. “Dreams? Healing? Uh-I think we got separated? Hello? Where are you?”

“Hey I think I hear them!” Manny whisper hissed quietly, a proud look of excitement in the boys eyes as he tugged away and darted off to the left. “Miss Healing?”

“Manny!!”

When the boy didn’t come back after a moment he felt his heart stop. “Manny?!! Marco-!”

No response.

“MARCO!!!”

No response.

Fuck.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck.

Harry ran.

Something felt wrong, he could tell he wasn’t alone. The background sound of scuttling feet rang in the back of his ears no matter what direction he was running in. He heard a scream, it was hard to tell who’s voice it was but it shook the man to his very core.

“MARCO?!!”

He heard a soft sob. That he recognised, he knew that sob far too well. Immediately he spun on his heal and scrambled towards it until a figure emerged in the fog. The boy was curled up small against a tree and shivering.

“MANNY!” He cried in relief, crashing to his knees before the boy and immediately grabbing his shoulders. “WHERE DID YOU-“

They felt wrong. They were cold.

The boys head slowly lifted and his eyes were hollowed out bloody holes. A smile grew across his face revealing bloodied gums where teeth had been pulled.  
The redhead pulled his hands back and fell onto his behind, shuffling back slightly. No. Nonononono. This wasn’t right. This wasn’t-

“….M-anny?”

His voice came out as a whisper and the child let out an unholy giggle as his head turned 180° with a horrifying crack as the muscles in his neck severed and his bones popped. “A̘͓͇͚r̷̯͟͜e̺̪̳̜̫̬͇̞͜ ̛̼͈̮̼͓y̧̭̱o̴̭̤͞͡u̡̼̦̙ ̱͎͕͓ͅt̷̟̯͕͜͠h̨͔͕̲̫͔͇̪̰̘e̡̤̲͕ͅ ̠̻̺h̺̖͓̻̭͇̼̻͘͡͞u̷̡͓̥̰m̮̮̰͓̮a̞͇̱̝̙͘n҉̙̤̕?̷͓͚̤͓̮̱̝̞͠͠” came its voice, a crackly voice that waivered from Manny’s voice to horrifying demon from the depths of hell.

Harry screamed. Before he could even process the situation, he was on his feet and running. Too many years of living with monsters had at least left him with a pretty impressive fight or flight.

The trees were hard to navigate in the heavy mist and quickly he lost all sense of direction. “MANNY?” Harry called out frantically, his voice catching in his throat as he paused briefly and tugged a shaking hand back through his unwashed hair. The image of the boys monstrous face flashed in his mind and he keened at the back of his throat fearfully. 

There was an eerie silence in return, even the scuttling seemed to suddenly stop. The only thing Harry could hear was his own panicked breaths wheezing slightly, praying that he was the only one that could hear it. 

The redhead’s shoulders lowered slightly as he breathed out a heavy breath, trying to catch his bearings. Okay. Okay, no. The fog was making him paranoid. Five people didn’t just vanish without a sound. He’d taken a wrong turn somewhere, a monster was messing with his head. He’d lived with worse things. He could do this. He could-

Had it always been this dark?

Harry turned around slowly just in time to see the huge creature standing behind him, hundreds of glowing red slit eyes staring at him in sickening excitement as a horrendous grin stretched across its bloodied face, exposing rows after rows of jagged razor sharp teeth.  
It breathed down his frozen back and moved an insect like foot to touch the mans face. “Ah yes. H̬̺͉͔̯̰u̫̫̠̞̥̯̕m͍͎̣͓͖͕͖͝a̧͕̺n͏͏̩̙. One of three. Do you think he’d notice I͓ ͉o̥̯̗n̛̘l̷͖̣̫̩̟̲̲y̙͙̲ ̹͙̺̣̫ŗ̲̥e̠͙̖̺͔̘͙͡t͘u̶̬r̟n͈e̜̱͍̗d̹̗̫̻̻͍̞ ̲̫͚̬͉͉͝ţ̰̖͈w̛̬͚̘̫̹o̖͕̭̜̞?̯̥̰͟  
͍̹̼̪̜̙̦͝” 

Its voice felt like knives scraping the insides of his eardrums and he wanted to claw out his own brain to make it stop. Its insectoid limbs moved to hold him still as its mouth opened to the full, tearing open the monsters own skin and detaching it’s jaw like a snake.

Harry felt his blood run cold and his heart pulsate at almost a painful level. This was it, not only was this the horrible painful way he was going to perish in this nightmarish hellhole but he hadn’t even been able to protect his friends.

“DAAAARLING?”

Dreams! That was Dreams’ voice. The redhead tore forwards in a sudden panic, eyes bulging and a scream bursting from his throat with force like dolphin propelling itself from the ocean.

“DREA-“

He cut off as he suddenly fell quite harshly on his face, a sharp twig snagging his cheeks.

The thing had let go? He hadn’t expected it to be that easy to escape. When he scrambled to turn over, it was gone.

Harry was still in a daze staring into the foggy space the monster had been looming just a moment ago when the fluffy haired man emerged from the mist and quickly scooped him up, grabbing him under the armpits and hoisting him to his feet.

“Ah! It’s you! Oh right- The river!” He chuckled in delight, mentally piecing together the forgotten pieces of what he was doing.

Harry let out the breath he’d been holding and clung to the man’s arm slightly as he was put back on his feet, legs feeling like jelly and he was not certain they’d be able to support him anymore. He looked up at the man in terror, eyes starting to prickle with tears now that the initial panic was over.

“Dreams something is trying to kill me and I think it has the others too and you have to help me save Manny, he’s just a kid! He ran off into the fog and I can’t see him or hear him and I don’t know what to-“

His panicked stuttering was suddenly cut off when the man out of no-where pulled him close and kissed him, rather passionately too.

Harry felt the panic suddenly ease from his shoulders and his body entered a moment of sheer bliss, before the man suddenly pulled away and reality whacked him in the face like a metal shovel. “BLEGH! UGH, OH GOD, WHY THE FUCK DID YOU DO THAT? I WAS- THERE WAS- MANNY NEEDS-“

The mans furious shouting trailed away as his eyes moved to their surroundings only to see that the fog was gone. Trees, sunshine speckling the ground through the leaves, it was even warmer again. The next thing he noticed was that he could hear muffled voices coming from different directions.

Dreams wiped his mouth with one delicate gloved hand. “You think it was pleasant for me either? You haven’t brushed your teeth in a while, clearly.”

“What happened? Where’s the fog? Wh-“

The man seemed to light up in delight and pressed his hands to his cheeks. “You were having a bad dream, so I fixed it.” He chirped softly, “Oh- My darling! She must be close by.”

“That THING is your WIFE?”

“Nightmares is my everything. My wife, my best friend, my-“

“IT HAS EIGHT THOUSAND EYES AND TEETH COMING OUT OF EVERY HOLE IN IT’S BODY!”

“Hey-! She goes by ‘She’ and ‘Them’, don’t call her ‘it’, that’s extremely rude.”

Harry pressed his face into his hands and dragged his blunt fingernails down his eyelids, letting out a heavy breath.

“Okay I’m sorry. She is trying to kill us, can you PLEASE help me find Manny!”

“Oh, of course! I know just where he is.” He sang delightedly, holding out his gloved palm for the man to take for guidance.

“Which one is Manny again?”

 

\--

 

“Mercy. My Mercy.” Space purred adoringly, lounging loosely against the arm of the Concept’s throne, loosening up her shoulders from their usual military stiffness.

The soft looking Concept with flowing peach hair and marshmallow eyes smiled a warm honey grin and lifted a slender finger to stroke the other female’s soft cheek. “Technology will be coming back soon. You should return to your post before we end up being prisoners rather than guards, dearest.”

“Hm. Who are the real prisoners here?”

Mercy chuckled and tilted the woman’s sharp chin, pressing a kiss on the side of her ice cold lips. “You want to know something.”

Space cracked a smirk. Of course, Mercy was too smart to fall for that old chestnut.

“I want to know what you plan to do with the humans when they arrive. I’d like to plan ahead to make sure we can stop anyone else using the same means to escape. Are we shutting down the field? Do we need to recruit watchmen?” She enquired, placing a hand on the other Concept’s warm thigh and moving to nuzzle her sharp nose against the other’s soft cheek.

A cold grin grew across the Mercy’s face, exposing the sharp teeth behind her rosy lips.

“Oh my sweet and naive Space.” She sang softly, the other woman pulling back slowly as her brows furrowed.

“I know that Fate is too dense to sniff out a lie if it grabbed him by the hair and bashed his soft little head into the pavement, but you?”

Space sunk back slightly and slowly placed her heals back on the ground to steady herself on the arm of the chair. “But you said it yourself, they don’t deserve to die here. They’re just humans. The Voices will-"

“Blame Fate.”

Space narrowed her eyes and sunk back against the woman’s shoulder.

“I don’t think that’s fair.”

Mercy rested her head on the taller woman’s sharp shoulder and ran a clawed hand down her arm with affectionate softness. “The universe isn’t a fair place dearest.” She hummed, toothy grin spreading just a little wider. “After all, you said it yourself-”

 

“-Who are the real prisoners here?”


End file.
